By Maisha Hasan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Four Halton-area student robotics teams are heading to an international competition in Niagara later this month after qualifying through a provincial tournament. From June 13 to June 20, FIRST Canada’s Canada Cup of Robotics will hold the event in Niagara Region, and the Burlington-based Halton STEM Club will send four teams, consisting of students in grades 4 to 8: Artifact Hunters 45059, Archaeonauts 60977, Legotics 61483, and the Teal Cactuses 70494.
Twenty teams from the provincial qualifying competition were selected for the international event, and Halton STEM Club secured four of those spots.
The event will be hosted by Brock University at Canada Games Park, marking the first time in a decade that the competition has been held in Ontario. A total of 96 teams from across the globe will compete at this year’s competition, which is split into two sections: the FIRST Tech Challenge during the first half of the event, and the FIRST LEGO League Challenge in the second half.
Even though it is far from the club’s first time being recognized for its achievements, including at the international level, there remains a strong sense of excitement, particularly from Frank He and Ayesha Shehzad. He is the founder and senior mentor of the club, while Shehzad has been mentoring teams for the past year.
“This was [a new team’s] first year and my first year competing, and it’s just been really intense, really good,” Shehzad said.
Shehzad, like other Halton STEM Club mentors, volunteers in her spare time outside of her regular work. Parents of team members are hands-on in their own ways, so making it to this level has felt like an accomplishment shared not just by the teams themselves but by their support systems as well.
Throughout her year mentoring, she has observed kids grow in their skills.
“They’ve learned real engineering skills like coding, designing, testing, but they also learned skills that really matter for life…[that] they can carry throughout their education and into the next competitions too,” Shehzad continued. “We’re becoming confident problem solvers. I hope for the kids that are doing it, [that] they see that STEM is for everyone. You don’t need to be an expert to start it. You just need curiosity and a willingness to try.”
He explained how both mentors and students have developed their organizational and technical abilities, honing their skills not only this past year, but since the club’s inception.
“Over the years, we accumulated lots and lots of documents and experience that we can teach each other. We’re getting better at organizing teams…and selecting mentors. Once it’s done and you are really passionate about it, you get better at it [mentoring] really quickly,” He said.
A lot of the honing of those skills can be attributed to the behind-the-scenes work, including preparing for the competition.
“We have to work through and make sure it works exactly as we want. Even small problems [regarding] a Windows laptop and a Mac laptop. The program works differently. All those nuances of finding, identifying, troubleshooting, and making sure it works exactly how we want it to. It’s countless hours of practice, rehearsal, and then presentation,” He said.
The club has worked with experts in the field to examine issues and learn from them, further enriching their knowledge. Even seeing other teams compete has helped them learn.
“That’s been a really huge learning moment for us because that gives us ideas. I hope that other teams can also learn from us. It’s a really interesting angle that we all got to see,” Shehzad said.
Shehzad continued, “I’m not really in engineering, so the innovation part, especially, has been fun for me. It’s something I’m passionate about, and something that I hope the kids learn to be passionate about as well.”
