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Jahn Robotics Team

This is the home page for the Jahn Robotics Teams! In Fall 2024, we are fielding TWO teams to compete in FIRST Lego League. These are:
 
#56600 Jahn Rad Robotic Chickens (6th/7th grade)
Coaches: Mollie Rapp, Colleen Lavin, and Dr. Chae
 
#65211 Jahn Coral Reef Robots (4th/5th grade)
Coaches: Johnny Vivoda, Michael Kilkelly, Sandra Sugano, Paul Baker, Jeff Shepard

Lead coach for the whole program is Luke Shepard. Students meet every week on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3-4:30pm.
Our Qualifier Tournament will be on:
 
    Saturday, December 14, 2024
    St. Ignatius College Prep
    1076 W Roosevelt Road, Chicago IL 60608
 
Students who are participating at the tournament need to be officially registered with the FLL national system at firstinspires.org.
 
Parents, please register with the team - you should have received more info in email.

Fall 2024 FIRST Lego League Season

Students learn how to build and code a robot and explore the engineering design process. FIRST Lego League is an international program which consists of four parts, all of which are completed and then presented by team members at a tournament.

  1. Robot Game: Teams build a robot to solve as many challenges as possible in 2.5 minutes. You can check out this 8-minute video for a clearer understanding of the missions.

  2. Robot Design: Students present their robot and explain the design process to the judges.

  3. Innovation Project: Teams research a problem related to ocean exploration, propose a solution, seek expert feedback, iterate, and present their project to the judges in a 5-minute presentation followed by Q&A.

  4. Core Values: The competition emphasizes Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork, and Fun. Judges look to see that each team member contributed to both the robot and the Innovation Project and demonstrated positive teamwork throughout.

Season materials are found at firstinspires.org. All of our team's materials are found in this Google Drive folder (please request permission if it's not shared with you):
 
 
 
The robotics club is a large collaboration among teachers, staff and parent volunteers. 
 
Volunteer Coaches
 
This program could never happen without extensive support from parents and volunteers. Luke Shepard is the parent of 4th, 6th, and 7th grade students at Jahn. He began the program in 2023 with Mollie Rapp, who has two students at Jahn, in 3rd and 6th grade. The nascent program has been supported throughout by Johnny Vivoda, Michael Kilkelly, Jeff Shepard, Colleen Lavin, Sandra Sugano, Tamer Haddadin, Paul Baker, and all who have come out to the tournaments, hosted a practice or otherwise contributed.
 
Staff
 
Dr. Chae is coaching the team during Fall 2024. Thank you as well to Ms. Lynch and Mr. Knaus for the use of their classrooms, to Ms. D for help with technology support, and Mrs. Walsh for helping launch the coding class in Winter 2024. We are grateful as well for the consistent support from Dr. Kimbrough and Dr. Ferrera.
 
We are always looking for eager and interested volunteers! You are welcome to come to observe. Email Luke at [email protected] with any questions or if you'd like to get involved.
 
We use LEGO Spike Prime robots on the team. This is a list of resources to help learn about coding and building these robots.
 
* https://pybricks.com/learn/ This year we are experimenting with PyBricks, which is an open-source tool that offers both block-based and Python-based coding mechanism. Please see the student google drive folder above for instructions to access the Pybricks license key.
 
More Websites
 

2023 Season Recap

In 2023, Jahn fielded our first ever First Lego League team. The team competed in a qualifier and sectional tournament and has advanced to the State competition! We are one of only a few schools in CPS to advance to state.

 

Jahn robotics team poses at the sectionals tournament

 

We will plan to offer a class via OST in Winter/Spring 2025. Stay tuned for more information on this class to be available in January 2025!