About Us

What Is FIRST?

FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded by inventor Dean Kamen to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology. Based in Manchester, New Hampshire, FIRST is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public charity.

FIRST's mission is to inspire young people to become science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting, mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills. These skills inspire innovation and foster well-rounded life capabilities, including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

As a volunteer-driven organization, FIRST is built on partnerships with individuals as well as businesses, educational institutions, and the government. Some of the world's most respected companies provide funding, mentorship time and talent, and equipment to make FIRST’s mission a reality. By becoming a volunteer, you will join over 90,000 other committed volunteers who are key to introducing the joy of problem-solving through engineering to almost 250,000 students.

What Is FTC?

FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is the newest addition to the family of FIRST programs. FTC grew out of a need for a mid-level robotics program to transition teams from FIRST LEGO League to the FIRST Robotics Competition. Piloted for two years as the FIRST Vex Challenge, FTC became an official FIRST program and was renamed FIRST Tech Challenge in 2007.

The FIRST Tech Challenge is student-centered, mentor-supported, and is about giving students a unique and stimulating experience. We want students to learn the value of teamwork and to respect everyone's ideas and contributions to the team. The FIRST Tech Challenge allows middle and high school students to work hand-in-hand with technical professionals to develop a solution to the annual challenge. FIRST values are about appreciating our differences and learning what those differences add to our lives. FIRST programs succeed most fully when team members bring the FIRST values they learn back to their communities.

The FTC Competition Kit challenges students' creative problem-solving skills by enabling them to build robots that do amazing things. Students design and construct robots that can be autonomously programmed or operator-controlled to perform various tasks that expand the boundaries of experimental intelligence.

FTC 14799- Javawocky:

Our goal is to expand FIRST in our community while maintaining Christian beliefs. We compete annually in the FTC and have made it to State Championships in all of our previous seasons.

Mission Statement:

The mission of FTC team #14799 Javawocky is to inspire future generations of young innovators as well as promote STEM in our local communities. We hope to inspire and encourage other teams through our work and Christan background.

Team Values:

FIRST is about more than building a robot. It is designed to promote STEM and STEM education while learning important teamwork, public speaking, and entrepreneurship skills imperative for all careers. We embrace the program and aim to raise the bar by continually improving not only ourselves as a team, but as individuals, and through this, inspire others to do the same.

We compete in the spirit of Gracious Professionalism and share this spirit with all other FIRST teams. It's a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community. With Gracious Professionalism, fierce competition and mutual gain are not separate notions.

Javawocky aims to carry FIRST with us after we graduate. We will do this by not only taking the skills and abilities we have gained and developed and using them in college and in the workforce, but also by creating, coaching, mentoring, and volunteering with FIRST teams after we age out of FIRST. We do this to share FIRST with the generation of students after us and to give back to the program that built us.

Team Organization

For the past few years, our team has been set up in several sub-teams. With the “sub-teams”, everyone gets to focus on one area that they are interested in working in at the time. We have four main categories: Software, Hardware, and Administration.

Software: Software programs our robot for each particular season. Each member of the software team helps make the decisions with the code that will best benefit our team. They troubleshoot any technical problems on the team. They perform quality assurance checks on the robot so that when we get to each competition there are no major malfunctions that could have been prevented. They are constantly checking our motor quality so that we perform at our best, we learned that even if a motor is slightly off it can make a big change to how the robot performs.

Hardware: The hardware team is responsible for the construction of the robot. They also fix any hardware problems with the robot. They are constantly finding creative and practical solutions to our hardware-based problems and strive hard to make our ideas come to life.

Administration: The administration team handles all of the business sides of the team. You can consider it the behind-the-scenes look at what makes this team run. Administration is responsible for finances, fundraising, outreach, social media, newsletters, contacting local businesses, and organizing the team and our meetings. The administration team also organizes most of our engineering notebook.

Sustainability

Donors:

We have been fortunate to receive multiple donations from our community. Two of them are a portable, organized toolbox and an Acer Chromebook 311. The custom Stanley toolbox was a donation generously provided by a local company called Taylor Construction. Since our entire workshop had to be transported every time we meet, the rolling toolbox was been a major lifesaver in which we are able to transport everything we need. It is now being used as a great storage space in our new room provied graciously by our school. The Acer Chromebook was purchased for the team by Team Member Lilly Adcock’s grandmother. This laptop is a major help for the people on the coding team as it is serving its purpose to provide our needs. We also received a $100 cash donation from Coach Chris’s company, Pehler & Associates, LLC, and a premium zoom account generously gifted to us by Central Creativity, which is a local STEM community center.

Member Recruitment

For us, anyone, from any background, with the drive and interest in STEM is all we need. New team members do not need to know everything about FIRST. After all, this is a learning experience. We love welcoming new team members with open arms and watching them flourish in all FIRST and STEM activities.

As this school year goes on, we hope to continue to update this website with new information and use creative outreach projects to reach out and present new information to any potential tea members.

At the start of the school year, we sent an email out to everyone in our school contaning links this website, specifically our Join Us page.

Expectations

Participation is key in this team. The definition of a team is a group of individuals working together to create something bigger than what a mere member is. We feel that eliminating the Captain/Co-Captain roles allowed us to share in the responsibilities of making our team a success. Core Values and Gracious Professionalism are also the backbone of our team. As Woodie Flowers puts it, "never do anything you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see." The aspect of safety is of utmost importance. We require members to wear safety goggles whenever handling the robot, using dangerous tools, and inside the pit at competitions.

Training

One of our goals this year is to rotate responsibilities so that EVERY team member gets a feel for everything. That way, when older members graduate, the newer members won’t have trouble filling in for other roles. We believe that a good team has people do just their assigned job, but in a great team, every team member can do every job. We are also considering setting up off-season camps and workshops for new members so they can get an introductory taste of FTC.