Tau Beta Pi has been working with C-Tech/Youth-N-Tech and South LA Robotics to create a robotics competition for 9-12-year-olds in the South LA area. We need “older buddies” from USC who will be paired with a student or team of students (multiple buddies to a team if we get enough volunteers) who can answer simple questions and give the kids encouragement as they complete a challenge and video by the end of the competition!
The robotics platform is mbot (a super easy robotics platform for kids) and all programming is done in scratch (a graphic drag-and-drop programming language for kids). All kids in the competition have already completed a robotics class with South LA Robotics so questions should be very simple and the platform/programming is easy to learn. Buddies will be there to answer simple questions and provide encouragement by participating in virtual “office hours”. Basically, buddies are there to cheer them on and give them an older friendly Trojan engineer who believes they can finish the competition!
The competition will happen (virtually) from March 13th-March 27th. There will be an onboarding session on the 13th where USC “older buddies” will meet the kid(s) they’ll work with. Additionally, there will be a program on April 3rd where the kids will be congratulated, videos will be shown, and prizes awarded. The buddies are encouraged to show up to the April 3rd event to cheer on their kids. Time commitment should be about a total of 4 hours. It will be one hour every Saturday afternoon from March 13th – April 3rd.
If you are interested in signing up, use this forum. Any questions can be directed to arlamb@usc.edu
Published on March 11th, 2021
Last updated on March 11th, 2021