Girlsday
The challenge
Girlsday is a national initiative of VHTO in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and TechniekTalent.nu. Across the country, more than 11,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 15 get a chance to take a good look inside 350 technical and ICT companies and universities. Through practical and creative workshops, accompanied by female role models, the students discover the versatility of a job in technology. Hopefully, they will therefore choose a technical profile more often!
Although the growth is undeniable, girls in secondary education generally do not yet sufficiently opt for a technical subject cluster. There has also been little increase in the number of students going on to technical follow-up studies. That’s why, as part of Girlsday, Bright Society organized a cool game. The game should have attraction to young girls but also show & learn technical skills in a fun way.
The project
We decided to build the Robot Challange! Along with a team from ASML we spent an evening brainstorming. Since ASML is already involved in promotion of Beta sciences they already had some nice tools to play with! One of these tools where eight Lego Mindstorm EV3 robots. With these robot’s we made three area’s where the girls could play, learn and execute their new found skills.
The first area was a Playground: experience what the robots are able to. Find out what sensors are. Steer the robot using the sensors! We had pre-build robots where the girls could play with. From a dog that barks when you pet his back to a color scanning robot that would turn left on blue and right on red.. and many more.
The second area was a Robot school: learn more about steering the robots by playing the first 3 levels of Fix the Factory in order to get your Robot Diploma! Now you are ready to score! Here you where given a tablet with the Lego Mindstorm game on it. In this game you have to guide a robot from start to finish while letting him perform tasks. You basically had to “program” this robot’s path. This learned the girls the fundamentals of thinking in programming. You had 15 minutes and where competing against other girls to complete as many levels as you could.
The third area was Robot game: you are an experienced robot programmer now and ready to score. Strategically place 3 seats on the field. Program your robot and try to shoot as many cups as you can! Here you had to apply the skills learned in the second area. The girls had to team up with another girl in teams of two. Two teams would compete against each other. They had to program the path of a real robot towards a goal and then shoot a ball in this goal. However the other team had the chance to place obstacles in the path of the robot.
The bright moment
We were a real hit! In one day we had more than 1200 girls coming through our stand. It was allot of fun! Check out the video of our Robot Challange!
Get involved
If you would like to organize another bright moment like this one contact projects@bright-foundation.com.