The competition will be part of the Vex robotics series. Those who win at the local level could work their way up and eventually earn a place in the world championship games.<\/p>\n
This year,\u00a0STEAMwhiz does not expect local teams to participate in the Vex event. The competition will be on Jan. 17 at Albany Capital Center.<\/p>\n
But teams from other parts of New York State will compete, and\u00a0STEAMwhiz co-founder Javier Pulecio is hoping local students come to watch \u2014 and get inspired to join the Vex challenge next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the\u00a0tri-city area, we\u2019re the only team that\u2019s competing (in Vex) at the elementary and middle school level,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m trying to organize the Capital Region even more.\u201d<\/p>\n
STEAMwhiz, a private business based in Guilderland, started to teach young students robotics. It has a lab space\u00a0and offers\u00a0camps as well as\u00a0programming for other organizations. Now, the organizers are also teaching robotics and other science topics in local schools, through BOCES.<\/p>\n
\u201cRobotics is a great way to develop those base skills you need and you don\u2019t really get in other areas,\u201d he said. \u201cYou get mechanical engineering, you get physics, you get coding, you get creative problem solving, you get the teamwork. It\u2019s a really great opportunity for kids. I didn\u2019t start learning those skills ’til I was an undergrad in college.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are several robotic competitions. He chose Vex because it was the most affordable. The entry-level kit for beginners is $600 per team.<\/p>\n
\u201cOthers are thousands of dollars\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s cost prohibitive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The kit comes with everything the team needs to build a robot that can do whatever challenge is proposed for that year\u2019s competition. The materials are genuinely expensive, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the reality of robotics,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if you get a consumer off-the-shelf kit that\u2019s less advanced than the Vex kit, that\u2019s $300 to $400. And that\u2019s just for kids to play with at home. Vex is the next step up. The electronics and the hardware that comes with it is really great.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the cost is a major factor when local elementary and middle school leaders consider starting a team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the big hurdle we\u2019re trying to overcome,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
University at Albany\u2019s College of\u00a0Nanotechnology,\u00a0Science and Engineering (CNSE) is supporting the effort, with funding that will help with the local competition as well as materials to start new teams and travel expenses for other competitions.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0STEAMwhiz\u2019s middle school team unexpectedly made it to the world championship last year, the team had to quickly fundraise to make enough money to go to Dallas to the competition. There, the team came in 73rd out of 412 teams.<\/p>\n
STEAMwhiz is a private business based in Guilderland. Pulecio has started the process\u00a0to turn it into a nonprofit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The competition will be part of the Vex robotics series. Those who win at the local level could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30394,67,844,610,9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-70931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-alco","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-latestnews","11":"tag-local","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-new-york-state","16":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}