Written By: Ally L
The First Week of Training Month
On Talon Robotics, Training Month is the month of September each year after the first week of school. During Training Month, we run introductory meetings on every part of the team, both business and build. Anyone can show up in the Robotics Room (room 165, if you are interested in coming) and learn the basics of any part of robotics.
Monday September 8th – Day 1
On the very first day of Training Month for 2025, we had four trainings. The first was a tool sign-off training led by our Engineering Deputies! They taught everyone in the open room how to use drills safely and signed people off. When someone is signed off on a tool on Talon, they are allowed to use it whenever they need it in the room, because we know they’ll use it safely and effectively. Great job, deputies!
The second training of the training month was a Media meeting! On the Business side, the trainings will be similar to regular meetings, but each one will introduce any new members to the subteam and teach basic skills of the subteam through projects or tasks during the meeting. In this Media meeting, the Media lead, Audrey, taught everyone about making posters and introduced an ongoing project: making friendship bracelets for other teams! We learned about making posters by designing graphics for random words, resulting in posters like an Alpharat (Alphabet rat) poster.
Thank you also to our Media mentor, Kelly, who brought cookies for everyone at the meeting! They were amazing.
After Media was another Build training, one of our Engineering Deputies, Will, led a training introducing the basics of programming on Talon and teaching about our unique programming language, Rust. There were many interesting activities, such as writing code to make a PB&J, and designing robot autonomous programs with people pretending to be robots. It was so much fun!
The last meeting of the day was Outreach. Our Outreach lead, Viki, led an amazing meeting that introduced everyone to what Outreach means on Talon. It was a great introduction to the variety of events that the team runs to help our community! We also worked on getting ready for the Activities Rush, an event that teaches EPHS students about all of the clubs they could join! Finally, we worked to prepare for Harvest to Halloween, one of our cutest events of the year, where we teach little kids about STEM while they celebrate Halloween early.
Tuesday September 9th – Day 2
On the second day of Training Month, we only had one training. Our Awards lead, Nyel, led a meeting covering the basics of Awards in FTC. Everyone learned about the different types of awards that our team applies for each year, and our process for applying for them. This was a super informative meeting, and it was a great introduction to the Awards subteam!
Wednesday September 9th – Day 3
The third day of Training Month had two trainings! Both were Business trainings, and they were very interesting. The first was Inclusivity! Our Inclusivity lead, Gabe, taught everyone about what the subteam was, what they do on our team and in our community, and how the subteam has changed from last year. Last season, Inclusivity was a neutral subteam, but it is now a Business subteam, due to the amount of events they run! This meeting was very fun and explained all about Inclusivity on Talon.
Right after the Inclusivity meeting was Sponsorships, our Sponsorships subteam, led by Jamie, has already had many events this year. So, their meeting jumped straight into applying for grants! We learned about what grants our team can apply for and what to write in an effective grant application. It was a really productive meeting!
Friday September 12th – Day 5
There were no trainings on Thursday, but on Friday we had a second programming training with one of our deputies, Will! This training was the same as the one on Monday, but at a different time to make sure anyone interested in programming on Talon was able to learn! During the Friday training, the PB&J “code” instructions went much better, producing more normal PB&Js rather than sandwich monstrosities.
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