It is our belief that every interested student deserves the best possible robotics experience, even if their own school does not have its own FIRST team. In past years we have hosted students from Mentor College, Iroquois Ridge High School, Holy Trinity Secondary School, Nelson High School and TA Blakelock Secondary School. As a result of our partnership, FIRST Team 3161, Holy Trinity, is now in its second year following a terrific rookie year. Another part of this is to ensure that there is an interest in science, technology, and engineering in younger years so that the team can continue once current members have graduated and moved on. We encourage younger students to join our team through our Little Devils program, where we allow students from OTHS feeder schools to come in and work with the team during build season. We currently have one extremely active Little Devil on the team. We also encourage as many of our team members as possible to get involved with FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL). We have started more than a dozen FLL teams and continue to mentor and also mentor students in an under-served community throughout the school year who do not compete. Our team members and mentors volunteered at 2 regional FLL tournamnents as Head Judge Assistant, judges or referees. Two of our team members and 1 mentor went on to volunteer at the Provincial event in Oshawa, Ontario as well.

Also, in efforts to promote the FIRST program, we make many public appearances in our community. For the last four summers, we have been involved in Oakville's annual Midnight Madness. We set up a booth with our robot to do demonstrations along with an FLL table. This past summer, we invited other FRC teams in Oakville to join us. We also made an appearance with four other teams at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, where we demonstrated our robot to promote the FIRST program to thousands of people from Canada and beyond. Last year, we had three students and a mentor attend the Halton Skills Breakfast, where they set up a display and slideshow and answered questions and gave information about the FIRST. We also attended Robot Rules week again this year at the Ontario Science Centre, where we demonstrated our robot along side other teams.

Our team has run a Halloween for Hunger food drive for four consecutive years, gathering non-perishable food items on Halloween from our local community, and then volunteering our time at the Fareshare Food Bank in Oakville, helping to sort food donations. We have run robotics clinics at our local library over the summer and early school year, instilling a love of robotics and science in the young participants. This year was our first year participating in the Santa Claus Parade where we promoted FIRST and also won Best School Float.

OTHS Robotics Attends the Canada Wide Science Fair

On May 19, team 1334 gave a series of demonstrations which were viewed by hundreds of students and teachers attending the finals of the Canada Wide Science Fair held at the Seneca College Newnham campus. We showed off HANK by expertly hanging tubes and deploying our minibot--skills that were well practiced during the last few months in our FIRST LOGO MOTION regional and championship matches.Team members also introduced audience members to the goals and values of FIRST, and much enthusiasm was generated for starting new FRC and FLL teams. We also had a chance to view some great science projects, and it was an inspiring day for all involved.

The 1st FIRST Community

In honour of the 10th anniversary of FIRST Robotics Canada, Team 1334 hosted a ceremony on December 20, 2010 to recognize the accomplishments of FIRST participants as well as the community service provided by all FIRST teams in the town of Oakville. All FRC, FLL and Jr. FLL teams in Oakville were invited and well over one- hundred people were in attendance for the event, including His Worship Rob Burton Mayor of Oakville, Mr. Kevin Flynn (MPP for Oakville), Mr. Terence Young (MP for Oakville), and Mr. Mark Breadner (Executive Director for FIRST Robotics Canada). At the event, His Worship Rob Burton presented the FIRST community with a proclamation recognizing and honouring "... the tremendous accomplishments of our many FIRST participants in Oakville for encouraging our youth to become science and technology leaders...". In recognition of the community service provide by FIRST participants in Oakville, Charles Woods (Teacher Mentor of Team 1334) and Cory Sulpizi (Student Captain of Team 1334) unveiled a sign to be displayed announcing Oakville as "The 1st FIRST Community". All FIRST teams in Oakville then joined together to recognize two private sponsors as Flagship Sponsors in Oakville - Hatch and Ford Motor Company of Canada. We also recognized twenty-one past and present members of the Oakville FIRST community by naming them "FIRST Robotics Heroes" for their outstanding contributions to FIRST, as well as to the broader community. Team 1334 OTHS Robotics has also received a Letter of Recognition from the Regional Municipality of Halton on behalf of all FIRST participants in Halton and has requested similar recognition from Province of Ontario and the Government of Canada. Team 1334 OTHS Robotics will be issuing a challenge to all FRC teams world-wide to have their communities named "A FIRST Community".

Ontario Science Center: Robots Rule Weekend

On the 21st of November OTHS Red Devils were at the Ontario Science Center to demo our robot to hundreds of children and adults. With us were two other FIRST Robotics teams who we worked with to show the audience what FIRST Robotics is all about. We had children of both genders that were very intrigued by the robots and got to see them up close. We answered numerous questions and we received a lot of interest from everyone that attended. This event turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for us to spread the message of engineering and technology and we hope to do it again in the future.

Oakville Santa Claus Parade

On November 20, team 1334 took part in the annual Oakville Santa Claus Parade. It was the first year that the team participated in the parade and it was a perfect, blue sky, mild temperature day; we couldn't have asked for a better one! Some team members walked alongside the float entertaining the crowd by spelling "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays!" with letters worn on their fronts and backs and handing out candy. But it was the float that stole the show. The theme this year was movies and of course, famous robots from the big screens made a guest appearance on our float including Optimus Prime, Wall-E, and C-3PO. But the real show stopper was a life-size model of R2D2 made by our very own build team. The team worked long and hard to make sure everything was finished and ready on time, and in the end it was worth all the effort to see the looks of pure joy and enchantment on the faces of the children in the audience. It was priceless! UPDATE: We tied with White Oaks Secondary School for the Best School Float Award!

FLL Practice Tournament

On November 13, team 1334 hosted a FIRST Lego League practice tournament at Oakville Trafalgar High School for 5 FLL teams that will competing in regional FLL tournaments over the next few weeks. Local teams and the Pretty River Predators from Collingwood joined us to perfect their missions and hone their presentation skills with thoughtful and supportive judging from our team members and mentors. Mrs. Peggy Scott joined us as head referee for the matches, and we concluded our day with a presentation from the Professional Engineers for Oakville which introduced the use of robots in biomedical engineering and a demonstration of the 1334 robots. Congratulations to all the FLL teams that participated for your hard work, and good luck at the FLL regionals!

Canadian National Exhibition Demo

On August 31st Team 1334 displayed our robot at the FIRST demonstration at the CNE along with nine other FRC teams and two FLL teams from Ontario. This year, we were indoors in the Direct Energy building and had a partial Breakaway field set up to simulate a competition. Many people came to our booth with questions about our robot construction, team events, and funding. Our robot performed superbly in front of thousands of observers all day, and we generated a lot of interest in our team and in FIRST.

Ford Test Drive Event

Thank you one and all for participating in our fund raiser on June 12! It was a fabulous community event which featured Oak-Land Ford and Kennedy Ford providing ten new vehicles for our guests to test drive. A barbecue, bouncy castle, face painting, music, and drive simulator added to the all day festivities at Oakville Trafalgar High School. Team 1334 robots were on display, and hundreds of kids and adults had a chance to drive our robots from the 2009 and 2010 seasons and test our Lego robot creations with the help of our team members and the students they mentor on our affiliated FLL teams. We are incredibly appreciative of the support from our sponsors for this event which included Ford who donated funds to our team for each test drive, Circus Chocolates and Black Forrest Pastry Shop for the scrumcious desserts which were donated to our barbecue, Dietrich's Meats which donated hot dogs and hamburgers, buns donated by Cobs Bread, and Sobey's and Fortino's markets which each donated beverages. Special thanks to Drivewise for the drive simulator and Airbounce for providing the bouncy castle.