Baldwinsville — With local and regional achievements under its belt, the Baldwinsville-based NxtG3n FIRST Lego League (FLL) robotics team is facing its next challenge: raising enough money to make it to the national Razorback Invitational Competition in May.
NxtG3n, whose roster includes students from Baldwinsville, Liverpool and North Syracuse, received the Core Values award at the FLL Regional Qualifier, held Nov. 14, 2015, in Mexico, NY. The team went on to place third overall and earned the “Robot Game High Score” in the FLL Regional Championship held Jan. 16 at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica.
How to help
There are several opportunities to help NxtG3n make it to the Razorback Invitational Competition in Arkansas:
• Visit the team’s booth at the Home and Garden Show, which will be held March 17 through 20 at the New York State Fairgrounds
• Donate your deposit returns at Baldwinsville Bottle and Can Return at River Mall
• Give online at gofundme.com/teamnextg3n
• Make a contribution via SUNY Polytechnic Institute by sending a check to the SUNY Poly College Foundation (SUNY Poly Office of Continuing Professional Education, 100 Seymour Road Utica, NY 13502). Be sure to include “NxtG3n Team #2331” on the memo line.
For more information, contact Denise Craig at FLL’s “Trash Trek” challenge required teams to develop an idea that helps reduce trash and encourage recycling. Teams must also build robots with Lego Mindstorms technology and navigate the robots through “missions.”
Judges at the regional competition called team’s “Recycle Bounty” concept “very original.” Recycle Bounty is a bottle and can return machine that would reward students with deposits onto their school identification cards to be used at the school store or cafeteria.
NxtG3n’s 2015-16 season adventures normally would have ended at the regional competition, but Denise Craig, whose son Benjamin is a member of the team, said NxtG3n received a stroke of good fortune.
continued — “The second place team bowed out for some reason. We thought we were done for the season, closing up shop, but our coach said, ‘We’re going to Arkansas,’” Craig said.
If the team can raise the $8,000 to travel to Fayetteville, Ark., NxtG3n will compete in the Razorback Invitational, which will be held at the University of Arkansas from May 19 to 22.
“The kids have worked so hard,” Craig said. “The oldest kids, they’ve been working together for the last four years. This is the first year they’ve gotten a trophy. It’s really paid off.”
NxtG3n has several fundraising efforts in progress. The team will demonstrate its robotics skills and host a Lego pit for children at the Home and Garden Show.
“We’re going to be exhibiting the robots on an hourly schedule,” Craig said.
In addition, the team has set up a fundraising account at Baldwinsville Bottle and Can Return at River Mall and is going door-to-door to ask local businesses for support.
“It teaches them to speak out and speak up and know how to talk to people,” Craig said. “Most teenagers are afraid to speak to adults. It teaches them to step out of their comfort zone.”
Craig said FLL competitions teach participants a variety of skills, not just computer programming and building robots.
“[The Recycle Bounty project] taught them a lot more about recycling. It taught them to come up with ideas that give solutions to current problems, and it helps them to think beyond their everyday,” she said. “You don’t get the judges’ attention unless you have something creative and out of the box.”
The team won its Core Values award because of the members’ cooperation. Craig said the kids had to assemble a series of tangrams without speaking.
“They’re all so different — different personalities working together,” she said. “They’ve worked together so long, they just knew, which is kind of neat.”
At press time, NxtG3n had raised less than $1,000 of its $8,000 goal on GoFundMe.
“We’re just super excited to be able to be out there,” Craig said.
To learn more about NxtG3n’s Recycle Bounty project and the team, visit nxtg3n2015.weebly.com.
