Have you ever played with legos? If you have, you know Legos encourages kids to use their creativity encourage problem solving. FIRST LEGO League (FLL) encourages kids to develop innovative projects that are sustainable. Last week, Josh, Owen, and myself reached out to one of the teams participating with FLL called the “Ultimate Programmers”.
During our outreach, we presented the purpose and development of Zotbins. This event was important to me because I knew it would allow more exposure to kids interested in STEM to see how to innovate sustainable technology. When I first entered this project, I did not know a lot about Zero Waste and sustainability; however, my experience with working on Zotbins for the past year allowed me to develop my skills as an engineer and become more aware about my waste. The world of technology is continuously changing, and our Zotbins team hopes to have an impact for our and future generations to become more conscious about innovating sustainably.
One of our activities was having the kids give examples of uses for Zotbins which included GPS for locating the nearest bin, waste management, and educating people. This activity would encourage kids to think about the importance of developing environmentally friendly technology. Next, we gave a tour showing one of our prototypes being implemented at Donald Bren Hall. The kids were able to see the Zotbin design including: the load cell to measure weight, IR Break Beam Sensor to detect motion, and ultrasonic sensor to measure fullness. At the end of our presentation, we had a quick, fun game of finding trash around campus and sorting it into recycle, compost, and landfill. Some items they found included water bottles, batteries, wet milk cartons, and soap bottles. From this, we told them fun facts like how water bottle caps go into landfill, batteries go into hazardous waste, and wet cardboard milk cartons go into compost. The Ultimate Programmers Team collected surveys from their peers before meeting with us. Their responses indicated that the challenge most kids face include knowing when to recycle, compost, and trash. All in all, this outreach event was geared towards educating kids like the Ultimate Programmers about the importance of learning how to properly recycle, compost, and trash and inspiring them to create projects like Zotbins for their schools.
primal says
November 13, 2019 at 1:14 pmGreat post Kathy!
Good work all of you for demoing the project to FLL kids and educating them on zero waste.