the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, the Ridgewood High School FTC Robotics team participated in their first competition in December. Our team (The WoodChips) competes in the FIRST Tech Challenge, a national robotics league.
FIRST Tech Challenge teams design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format. Students develop STEM skills and practice engineering principles while realizing the value of hard work, innovation, and collaboration.
The COVID-19 environment has made this year extremely challenging but has also demonstrated the perseverance and tenacity of the team. Unable to meet indoors, two team members practiced social distancing and set up their robot at the Kasschau Memorial Shell at Veterans Field. Mr. Wohner, a teacher at RHS and the team’s coach, transported the game elements which they built out of Cardboard Boxes to save money!
The remaining team members helped with troubleshooting through a video conference that was set up by creating a mobile hotspot. Although the team did not place in this competition, they were excited to show off their robot to the curious onlookers.
To find out more about our team, please email jwohner@ridgewood.k12.nj.us with FTC in the subject line, or go to https://www.firstinspires.org