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Novi High students prep a robot for competition on July 21 on the final day of the Girls' Robotics Workshop. Staffed by volunteers from the school's Frog Force robotics team, the weeklong camp was designed to introduce middle school girls to the engineering and math required for robotics competition. From left are: Shana Gubbi, and siblings Anne and Leah George, right.(Photo: JOHN HEIDER | hometownlife.com)

Girls from Frog Force 503, the Novi High School robotics team, spent some time paying it forward this summer.

Fresh off a strong competition season in FIRST Robotics, the students planned, organized and taught a five-day robotics workshop in July for rising seventh- and eighth-grade girls, some of whom will likely join Frog Force themselves once in high school.

The idea was to inspire the younger girls to explore robotics and the FIRST program as well as to help them build confidence in STEM subjects (science, mathematics, engineering and technology), in which girls are underrepresented.

Community involvement has long been a part of Novi High's FIRST program. But this was the first all-girls workshop at the middle school level in Novi, said Janelle Moore, the Frog Force outreach mentor.

"Part of our mission is to let the community know about the FIRST program for younger ages, to mentor those teams, to help parents start those teams," Moore said. "Our high school girls wanted to start with the middle school because they felt that was the age to reach the girls."

The workshop was July 17-21, for 3hours a day, at the high school.

"They learned about electricity and circuits. They learned about gearing. They did a whole section on game strategy and analysis. ... Then they applied those things to their (robot) build," Moore said.

They also scrimmaged their robots in a game, STEM Gems, invented by the high schoolers. It was played on a 12- by 12-foot field, the standard size in FIRST Tech Challenge, the FIRST middle school program.

"You could really see those girls open up and blossom over the week," Moore said.

Robotic competition gets underway in the late morning at Novi High during the last day of the school's summer Girls' STEM Workshop. Teams were trying to place plastic boxes in the squares in a robot-version of tic-tac-toe.(Photo: JOHN HEIDER | hometownlife.com)

On the workshop's last day, parents got to stop in and see their daughters' projects.

At the middle school level, Novi has more than a dozen robotics teams, including an all-girls team that qualified for state competition in the spring.

"We'dlike to continue that and form another (girls) team," Moore said.

At Novi High, girls make up about 30 percent of Frog Force 503, which has about 115 members, she said.

"We're trying to reach 50 percent, which is a FIRST Robotics goal and a Frog Force goal," Moore said.

FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a not-for-profit that encourages the study of STEM subjects.

Anne George works on a robot.(Photo: JOHN HEIDER | hometownlife.com)

mjachman@hometownlife.com

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