Local Robotics Team Creation Helps Children Across Globe With Math

GARRETT COUNTY, Md. - For the past 10 years, Garrett County's High School robotics team, Team 1629, has won countless regional and state competitions. On Thursday, one of Team 1629's creations was used to help third graders with their math lessons, and it's also helping kids overseas.

Team 1629, officially named "Garrett Coalition," started in 2005, and now it consists of 20 students from Northern and Southern High School.

The helpful creation, known as a "top spinner," is made of LEGO gears and other LEGO parts to help kids relate their current common core curriculum with a hands-on approach.

Alexandra Miller has been with Team 1629 for three years, and said the team's main focus is engineering inspiration.

"The thing I love about this is we're sending them around the world...if a child has information, no one can take that away from them," Miller said. "They'll always have that knowledge that Team 1629 Robotics gave them these top spinners to do things creatively and engineering-wise."

Resource teacher Chuck Trautwein said the top spinner is a very hands-on approach, and students from Team 1629 will get to teach all 300 third graders in Garrett County how to build and learn from the top spinner.

"What this machine does is it spins the top - it's a little toy, but there's a lot of math and science that goes into that process," Trautwein said. "We talk about the mathematics involved with the gear rations, and relate this machine to as much as their learning in the classrooms."

Girls on the team, like Abby Burdock, said they take pride in their work, exploring a career that is largely dominated by men.

"Important for women to get involved, and girls especially," Burdock said. "It is a boys league, engineering, and we can do just as much as they can."

The top spinner will also be sent to an orphanage in Sucre, Bolivia, a secondary school in Tanzania and a day school in the Philippines as Christmas presents.