JP2 Programmers

Hi! Since several of our team members aged-out or moved on after the 2016-17 Animal Allies season, we have decided to rename our team. We will miss those members!  We are now the JP2 Fireworks.  Katie and Maria Jose continued from the JP2 Programmers on to this new team, as well as new members Michael, Joseph, and Gabe.

Hey! We are the JP2 Programmers! This is our 3rd year as a team together. This year’s theme is Animal Allies. For the research area, we have to improve the relationship of humans and animal. During our summer and post-challenge research, we found out that people do not know about Diabetic Alert Dogs (trained service dogs that detect when a diabetic’s blood sugar levels are high or low)! For our solution to this problem, we made the “Save-A-Life Awareness Campaign”. The components of our Campaign are:

  1. We created a brochure about Diabetic Alert Dogs for diabetics.
  2. We presented our solution to Diabetic Educators at Children’s hospital, and they invited us back to present at their Parents Support Group for Children with Diabetes.
  3. Shared with parent support groups on Facebook.
  4. Shared with 6 diabetics.
  5. We shared with parents of diabetics.
  6. Sent our brochure to Park Nicollet.
  7. Created a survey asking people if they knew about Diabetic Alert Dogs.
  8. We posted the brochure on Facebook.
  9. We translated the brochure into Spanish because the majority for diagnoses with diabetes are hispanic.

 

We are very excited about our solution and we would like to share the brochure with you! Here is the link: https://www.shercofirst.org/DiabeticAlertDogsBrochure.pdf We also created a Spanish version of the brochure because according to statistics, Hispanics are twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes! We had a professional medical translator help us translate the D.A.D brochure into Spanish. Link to Spanish brochure: https://www.shercofirst.org/DiabeticAlertDogsBrochureSpanish.pdf

For our tournaments:

On December 3rd, we competed in the Elk River Regionals. We won the Programming Award and we will be moving on to Sectionals!

On January 28th, we competed in the Anishanabe Sectionals for Minnesota. We won the Core Values Award and we are moving on to State!

State is at Washington Technology Magnet School on February 25th. The event is free and open to the public. Come experience an in-depth robotics tournament and learn all about FLL!

We are the JP2 Programmers!

Our team members this year are Mary Ana, Grace Marie, Peter, Katie, Maria Jose, Julie, and Patrick. Julie and Patrick are new to this team this year, and they have already started adding their creative talents to our team! We are all homeschool students ranging from 9-14.

We have done lots of outreach this year! We helped kids learn about FLL through the Elk River Launch Event. Later in the year, we co-hosted with the JP2 Rockslides to host the Just For Fun tournament, where we helped teams get used to the experience of a tournament. Lots of the teams were not even prepared for tournament, so we gave them tips on their robot and we even helped put some teams robots back together after coming apart at table! Next, we put on a Show-N-Tell for our robotics teams at our church. We showed the public all about FLL, what judging sessions look like, and how to do table runs.

In total this year, the JP2 Programmers also mentored 3 FLL robotics teams! Their names were: The Shredders (won Core Values at Regionals), The Rubricks Crew (won the Project award at Regionals, and moved on to Sectionals), and the Waste Wizards (won Project at Regionals, moved on to Sectionals, and also won Project at Sectionals)! We are very proud of the teams we have mentored!!

Some of our team members can also be found volunteering at other tournaments; look for us in our blue shirts!

In the 2015-16 challenge year, the theme was TrashTrek. While, the official release happened in August,  during the summer we went on recycling tours to get information about recycling and garbage. We toured WM Elk River Landfill, Randy’s Sanitation, DemCon, By The Yard, both plants of Great River Energy and Liberty Paper. We also took programming classes to learn how the EV3’s work.

We came up with a great idea to get Lego Company to switch their packing material within their Lego sets from plastic to paper.  We contacted Lego and they loved the idea!  They even sent us a certificate!

At our regional tournament in November, we won the Judges Award as well.

Our 2015 team members are

Mary Ana

Kate

Grace Marie

Peter

Andrew

Katie

Maria Jose

We are a group of homeschool students ages 9-13.

We love to reach out to others. Some of our team members went to a STEM Day and we taught other kids how to program the EV3 robots. We even got some people interested in creating a team! At one of our last meetings, we also helped another Sherburne County Team, the Shredders. We showed them our project skit, taught them some programming, and we helped prepare them for their tournament.

Here are some pictures from our 2014 season.  The theme was world class learning.  Our task was to design a real world solution to help people learn better.  We decided to develop a program to greatly enhance the learning ability of students by discovering and treating vision problems more quickly and consistently.

Two of our team members have vision problems.  One of them “cheated” for many years and passed all the eye exams at the doctor’s office even though she was almost blind in one eye.  She would have gone blind in that eye if it hadn’t been caught.  Our solution would have caught her vision problem earlier.

In fact, according to www.uniteforsite.org 40% OF KIDS WHO PASS THE SNELLEN EYE TEST HAVE UNDETECTED VISION PROBLEMS

Our solution was to enhance the current vision screening done in schools and doctors offices by adding more tests.  In addition to the Snellen Eye Chart we also recommend adding a Near Vision test as well as a stereo fly test (to test how well the eyes work together).  We also recommend using 2 different Snellen Eye charts and using an eye patch instead of the spoon to reduce peaking.

We learned a lot as we searched the internet and the library for vision screening information.  We also asked pediatric opthalmologists, optometrists, orthoptists, a pediatrician, a school nurse, and a special ed teacher.

This is a picture of the 2014 season team.

The team members were

Emily

Alex

Mary Ana

Grace Marie

Andrew

Danny

Katie

The age range was  from 9 to 15.

These are the highlights from the Elk River Regional Tournament for us and the JP2 Rockslides.

Go to JP2 Rockslides page

We were thrilled to go to the state tournament during our rookie year!