One of our main outreach project this year is directly meant to help other FIRST teams, with a lack of technology, gain access to program their robot and use CAD. We contacted Dan Scott, Elmbrook School Districts Director of Technology, for help on where to start with this project. He gave us great advice on how to safely and securely clean computer hard drives, reload new Windows 10, and distribute these devices to teams in need. We then contacted 9 principals in the Elmbrook School District, both the Brookfield and Elm Grove public libraries, and Beth Dobrisinski, the Executive Director of the Elmbrook Education Foundation, for help in spreading the word of our idea. All these contacts were very gracious and agreed to help us in our efforts. To start collecting the devices we set up tables at both the Brookfield and Elm Grove libraries as well as Brookfield Central and Brookfield East high schools. Once we collected a total of 78 laptops and desktops, we started to organize and sort the devices. Once we had organized all the devices we had a total of 18 usable for FLL software and 9 usable for FTC software. The other 51 devices were either sold, for the purpose of buying cases and parts for the usable computers, or responsibly recycled using the same system and the Elmbrook School District. With the 27 usable devices, we started the “DBAN” process (a secure way of wiping computers hard drives and removing the current windows on the computer). After lots of challenges, we installed a new Windows 10 Pro and the appropriate software (FLL or FTC) onto the device. Finally, we are currently delivering devices to teams all over the Greater Milwaukee Area. We are hoping that these devices can help teams who are less fortunate than us get involved in FIRST to the best of their ability. These devices will help teams focus less on funding and finding technology, and more time on building and programming a robot, as well as competing in competitions to the best of their ability.
In early July 2021, we started our goal of aging the digital divide, but in FIRST. We saw a local flyer from our city (Brookfield) that had an electronic recycling publicized to the community. We saw an opportunity in these electronic recycling days, as a team we knew that our team and our community had a plethora of resources, one of these being technology. Just in our team we realized every single person had their own personal computer that they were using in some way for robotics.
We started in the planning stages, the first thing we did was read about the digital divide itself and really see if the project was feasible in any way. After reading about the topic we furthered our research by asking questions about everything that the project could have become in the future. We spent quite a bit of time making sure there were not going to be any seeping holes in our project that would cause a fall out later, and after talking to our school district's head of technology and learning the process of cleaning computers and laptops from the inside and out, we set the project public.
Our plan for collecting laptops and computers was simple, we had 8 key dates all throughout August that we planned on setting tables up at high traffic areas throughout Brookfield and Elm Grove; some of these places included Brookfield Public Library, Elm Grove Public Library, and both of our school districts' high schools. We gathered our team and had 2-3 individuals at every single table, being there to engage with people who were dropping off electronics or just in general wanted to know about FIRST and what FIRST is about. After all the collection and the buckets that were open for drop off at Brookfield Central and East high schools.
Currently in the 2023-2024 school year we are continuing this whole process, trying to reach as many kids as possible.
In Febuary, we were able to refurbish, repair, and deliver 5 laptops to a school in Honduras. With those laptops, the kids will finally be able to use billingual software and advance their educations, and experiences with STEM!
