---

Contents

• Prerequisites
• Submission
• Timeline
• Presentation Creation
• Writing the report

Prerequisites

Before reading this page, read the guidebook posted on the Lunabotics site because this is only supplemental material to it.

The 2023–2024 outreach report can be found in this folder.

Activity

For the hands on activity it is best not to go for a premeditated lesson plan and instead have an activity that will be engaging and achievable for the kids. The hardest part is getting the kids attention not teaching them things so it is best to do something that the kids will enjoy and take educational opportunities as they come.

Some examples of things we did with the FLL kids:

Sumo bots: Students build and program lego robots to try to push each others robots outside the ring. The mentors also built robots for the kids to compete against. This served to show students new ideas (color sensors, loops, gear ratios) they could use, which they did.

Drawing robots: Students built and programed lego robots to use markers attached to their robots to draw things on a large piece of paper. The great thing about this activity is it's very achievable but there is lots of room for the kids to be creative. Something else that happened with this activity was once one group did something all the other groups were inspired to do something similar and the mentors could get the group that did the thing to teach how they did it.

Submission

For the 2023–2024 STEM Engagement Report, they created a new way to submit. Instead of just uploading the file with a naming convention they changed halfway through the year without ever releasing a guidebook, the team lead now receives an email with a link to a "Deliverable" interface to submit.

This interface can be accessed via the team lead's NASA STEM Gateway user profile Deliverables tab or directly through the link emailed.

Note: The "My Profile" button in the top right does not work from the application page because it loads the wrong URL. It loads two /s in the URL. Mine goes to https://stemgateway.nasa.gov/public/s/s/profile/005t0000009tDzdAAE but needs to be https://stemgateway.nasa.gov/public/s/profile/005t0000009tDzdAAE. You will have a different profile ID than 005t0000009tDzdAAE.

It is a little janky, but at least clear what to do. You upload the document, click Next, and then click Finish. You should see a ☑️ and the documents should be in your profile's Documents tab.

Never one to trust Gateway (or NASA for that matter), I also uploaded the documents to the application and emailed them to Amanda, our point of contact.

Timeline

Begin thinking about outreach opportunities as soon as possible! For the 2023-2024 design cycle, we did FRC as the hands-on activity. This took place throughout the whole season.

Secondly, for our presentation style outreach event, Maddi reached out to the Coding Club faculty member at Blacksburg Middle School in early February. She just went to the school directory to see what teacher may want to host us and reached out via email. Then it was set up and took place the last week in February before the report was due.

While this may seem like it was quick and easy, make sure to get started on this as early as possible to minimize stress and maximize options.

Presentation Creation

The slides for the presentation were created in Google Slides using a premade theme found online. Then, slides were added according to the information Lunabotics requires such as an "About Us" section with pictures of the robot or last year's robot if before production, NASA Careers, how they can get involved in STEM at their current level, and what they need to achieve to work for NASA in the future. At the end of the slides, there needs to be a form for students to fill out that will help with the report. In the form, there MUST be questions such as gender, grade level, ethnicity, and various questions about the quality of the presentation itself including feedback on the slides and the presenters. Make sure these slides and the form can be accessed by anyone, not only students in Virginia Tech.

Writing the report

What Maddi did to begin the report was copy the previous design-cycles paper and edit directly on it for formatting ease. Then, the paper needs to be compared to the current specifications listed in the current guidebook to ensure all necessary pieces are included in the report. Refer to past reports as examples.