One day, Northwood School would like to host an interscholastic robotic competition, and Northwood has been working closely with local officials (ORDA and ROOST) and leaders from FIRST robotics competition in an effort to makes this a reality. But In order to do that the region needs at least three robotics teams. With Northwood and Potsdam High School, there are two.
Having more teams in the area would make a local competition more feasible, so and the robotics students and faculty have been helping Lake Placid High School create the third. Adding robotics to Northwood’s curriculum gave students with interests in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields an academic and extracurricular pursuit that builds their skills and makes them more attractive to colleges.
Students from the Northwood Robotics Team were happy to help the new team during a recent Robot Demo day at Lake Placid High School. Regarding the collaboration between the two schools, Mr. Jeff Martin, Northwood’s robotics teacher, said, “we’ll be competitors, but we’ll also be two Lake Placid teams that are looking out for each other.” The opportunity for cooperation and collaboration among the students from the two schools will allow Northwood School to do more work in the community, which is a goal of Headmaster Mike Maher.
Northwood School has been cooperating with FIRST Robotics, a nonprofit international youth organization that operates numerous robotics competitions, to bring a competition to Lake Placid.
“There is a lot of interest from FIRST Robotics to bring more teams to the North Country area,” said Mr. Martin.
The newly-formed robotics team of Lake Placid High School is now undergoing its rookie stage in building their first robots with grants from Northwood, NASA, and FIRST Robotics. The team will soon be working with students from Northwood again on programming, which will enable them to start competing alongside the Northwood team in upcoming competitions. The season starts January 6th, and Mr. Martin hopes to work closely with Lake Placid throughout the 6 week build season and mentor them through their first competition in mid March.
