An Open Letter to the Leaders of Oklahoma,

We are the Pre-Engineering students from Moore Norman Technology Center known as Team Shockwave. Our Pre-Engineering class was developed to give students a head start in the engineering career field. The class focuses on different aspects of it, allowing students a better understanding of what engineers actually do. We would like to incorporate First Robotics into our curriculum at Moore Norman because we believe it to be a great learning experience for students. Team 1742 would like to invite you to attend our FIRST Robotics competition in Houston , Texas this year.

Every year we enter a world-wide competition which tests our engineering knowledge to the extreme. The FIRST Robotics competition was developed by Dean Kamen to give kids with a strong interest in math and science a way to show off their skills. It begins with the kick-off at the beginning of January where they reveal a new challenge and the teams receive a kit of parts. Then the teams begin brainstorming and start building a robot to compete against and work with other teams at the regional competition. Each team has only six weeks to build and ship an entire robot built from the ground up. This year our challenge is called “Rack'n'Roll.” Two teams made up of three robots driven by human players score points by picking up pool tubes and placing them on a contraption called the rack. This is an amazing experience for any student who dreams of becoming an engineer. It is the most real-world experience a student can get while in school.

Our dream last year was to get as many Oklahoma teams as possible to join the FIRST competition; however this program is costly, limiting the schools that can join. We hope that by next year we can have our very own regional at the Cox Convention Center . Every year more teams join this program, and this year there are over 33,000 students participating.

We would like to invite you to be a part of our competition in Houston to allow you the chance to experience the greatest event combining learning and sportsmanship. We would also love for you to attend one of our practices and building days on our Moore Norman campus. We enjoy showing off our work to visitors allowing them to understand what we do. If we could inform everyone about this great learning opportunity, we would be ecstatic!

Sincerely,

Team 1742, Shockwave


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