FIRST® Tech Challenge Professional Development

Dates & Times: 

• Saturday, September 21st from 10:30am - 6pm (60-minute working lunch & dinner) 
• Sunday, September 22nd from 9:00am - 4:00pm (Breakfast & 60-minute working lunch) 

Course Description

The FIRST® Tech Challenge professional development course is designed for new and experienced teachers, facilitators, coaches, and mentors to enhance their overall FIRST® program knowledge, giving participants a strong understanding of how to implement all aspects of the program and how to achieve STEM learning objectives. In FIRST Tech Challenge, students learn to think like engineers. Teams design, build, and program robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams with a spirit of friendly competition. Many call it “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.” Participants in this course will walk in the footsteps of the students as they engage in these hands-on experiences and practice engineering principles such as keeping an engineering notebook.

Course Requirements

FIRST Wisconsin, through a generous donation from Google.org, provides the following materials to use during professional development and to take with them at the end of training: 

• FIRST Tech Challenge Robot kit - Unbuilt Robits Core Kit
• Control and Communication Set 
• Electronics Module and Sensor Set 
• Battery and Charger
• Refurbished Laptop (collected, refurbished, and donated by FTC Team #16460, GEarheads) 

Participant Brings: 

• Computer with internet access 
• Download REV Hardware client software prior to first session – https://docs.revrobotics.com/rev-hardware-client/. This program is needed for all electronic hardware used to build the FIRST Tech Challenge robot and only operates on MS Windows OS device. 

Mac Users: Please note that an Apple OS version of the hardware client is currently unavailable. To update the firmware and hardware, please refer to the FIRST Tech Challenge support documentation for detailed instructions on utilizing Manual Update Method 2 as outlined by REV. Instruction are found at https://ftcdocs.firstinspires.org/en/latest/ftc_sdk/updating/controlhub_os/Updating-the-Control-Hub-OS.html.

Course Objectives: 

By the end of this course, you will: 

• Participate in the FIRST experience from a student’s point of view. 
• Explore the essential components of the FIRST Tech Challenge program. 
• Feel comfortable using hardware and software components of FIRST Tech Challenge robotics kits. 
• Understand how to code using Blockly programming software. 
• Learn how to facilitate hands-on activities for the classroom or after-school programs. 
• Collaborate with other participants and share best practices. 
• Be able to foster computational thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving skills in students. 
• Have experience with Project-Based Learning, the Engineering Design Process, and 21st Century Skills. 
• Implement Diversity and Inclusion practices. 
• Utilize, model, and reinforce the FIRST Core Values!