Design, build, program, test. Do each of the following:
With your counselor’s approval, choose a task for the robot or robotic subsystem that you plan to build. Include sensor feedback and programming in the task. Document this information in your robot engineering notebook.
Design your robot. The robot design should use sensors and programming and have at least 2 degrees of freedom. Document the design in your robot engineering notebook using drawings and a written description.
Build a robot or robotic subsystem of your original design to accomplish the task you chose for requirement 4a.
Discuss with your counselor the programming options available for your robot
The Girlscouts are in the news right now, but not for a new engineering merit badge, or science, or soldering, or robotics – it’s cookie selling season. So our question is – @girlscouts where is *your* robotics merit badge? Maybe we missed it, but each year we check and there isn’t one.
A couple years ago after hearing from a lot of parents, we made our “skill badge” one for soldering – we’ve given out and included *thousands* of these in our tool kits. One of the reasons we made these was because there is not a soldering or electronics activity for girls and many parents expressed their frustrations to us. Any way, if you’re involved with the Girl scouts – please pass this along. We’ll gladly help out with suggestions for kits and curriculum. As Dean Kamen has said (founder of FIRST) – We are what we celebrate.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Well back when I was in scouts there where already lots of tech based merit badges. Atomic energy, aviation, model rocketry, and data processing. It was in the mid 70s when computers where still very rare. My sisters joined Girlscounts because they thought all the stuff I was doing in Boy Scouts was cool. I was shocked when I found that they two organisations where nothing alike. They didn’t stay long because they thought it was boring. It is hard because even today a lot of girls do not get exposure to tech or even real outdoors stuff. By the time they get to teens many of them don’t want to be involved in it. I don’t have any children but my niece has already built her first robot kit and has gone to a few airshows and she is only 10.
My daughter is in the scouts and she asked me if she could build a bot. I would love to see this happen! I might just have to have a badge made myself. Spark some interests in the group?
I ran a girl scout robotics activity one afternoon for some of the scouts near where I went to university. Each group built a cookie mover robot, a tilting conveyor belt. There were about 6 groups, so when it was done they lined all their conveyor robots together and their cookies would move along.
All the people who participated did get a robotics badge! 🙂 Maybe there are official and unofficial badges? Isn’t there a FLL badge too?
There’s even a joint NASA/Girl Scouts FIRST team around here, the Space Cookies (http://www.spacecookies.org/) — and they’re *good*, too! Now *why* can’t the Girl Scouts get their act together for a merit badge?
Well back when I was in scouts there where already lots of tech based merit badges. Atomic energy, aviation, model rocketry, and data processing. It was in the mid 70s when computers where still very rare. My sisters joined Girlscounts because they thought all the stuff I was doing in Boy Scouts was cool. I was shocked when I found that they two organisations where nothing alike. They didn’t stay long because they thought it was boring. It is hard because even today a lot of girls do not get exposure to tech or even real outdoors stuff. By the time they get to teens many of them don’t want to be involved in it. I don’t have any children but my niece has already built her first robot kit and has gone to a few airshows and she is only 10.
Forwarded this to my girlfriend who works for Girl Scouts in Boston. Hopefully we can make something happen, at least on a local level.
Girl scouts need a badge with conductive thread and a led that lights up
My daughter is in the scouts and she asked me if she could build a bot. I would love to see this happen! I might just have to have a badge made myself. Spark some interests in the group?
I ran a girl scout robotics activity one afternoon for some of the scouts near where I went to university. Each group built a cookie mover robot, a tilting conveyor belt. There were about 6 groups, so when it was done they lined all their conveyor robots together and their cookies would move along.
All the people who participated did get a robotics badge! 🙂 Maybe there are official and unofficial badges? Isn’t there a FLL badge too?
There’s even a joint NASA/Girl Scouts FIRST team around here, the Space Cookies (http://www.spacecookies.org/) — and they’re *good*, too! Now *why* can’t the Girl Scouts get their act together for a merit badge?