Palmyra
SERVING THE ANNVILLE & PALMYRA AREAS
townlively.com
NOVEMBER 13, 2024
SERVING THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES SINCE 1954
VOL I • NO 15
Local robotics team wins all-girl competition
CDC helps kids comprehend reading in entirely different ways
BY FRANCINE FULTON
BY JEFF FALK
The team celebrates its victory at the GirlP.O.W.E.R. competition in Flourtown.
“The theme was all about STEM and the music business. Our game was a multi-level game,” Walker explained. “(The robot) had to pick up a (musical) note. We had to get those notes and shoot them into the speaker to get points.” There was also an opportunity for teams to earn extra points by having the robot shoot notes into an amplifier. Since it was an offseason event, GirlP.O.W.E.R. was not part of FIRST. However, the team took its regular competition robot to the competition, as well as a second one built by younger students on the team. One of the robot’s operators at the GirlP.O.W.E.R. competition was Rikhita. “I operated the second robot. My friend had a preference to be a driver,” she said. “A driver moves and rotates the robot, and the operator picks up the notes
and shoots them.” The new competition season will begin in March, but the theme of the game will be announced in January 2025. “We have eight weeks to design, build and test a brand-new robot,” noted Walker. “We spend the offseason learning and practicing.” With a few breaks in the summer and during the holiday season, the group meets regularly. “We meet Monday and Wednesday evenings and sometimes on Saturdays,” Walker said. “Since we went to GirlP.O.W.E.R. in September we were in competition the next two weekends, and we are always looking to improve. We had new kids that started this fall, so everyone is working on something.” He said the team members complete tasks based on their strengths. “People gravitate to
one thing,” he said. “Some people will help out in other areas, but we have people that just program, people that do the design work and people that do the electrical work.” Walker is proud of the girls who participated in the recent competition, which is designed to assure that STEM programs are accessible to both girls and boys. “We hope that the publicity and success of GirlP.O.W.E.R. and competitions like it give more young women the confidence to succeed in robotics and beyond,” he stated. For more information about the team, visit www.team2539 .com or www.facebook.com/ FIRSTTeam2539. The team is currently in need of volunteer coaches and sponsors. Interested individuals may contact the team at kryptoncougars2539@gmail .com for more details.
Dyslexia is something that we might not fully understand. Dyslexia may be something we don’t talk enough about. Dyslexia might be more prevalent than we realize. It’s a learning disorder that Children’s Dyslexia Center (CDC) of Lancaster can help manage and, in some instances, even overcome. “What everyone needs to understand is that (dyslexia is) neurological, it runs in families and it affects language processing,” said Heather Brown, who’s been CDC of Lancaster’s director for 10 years. “What it’s not is reading backwards. It’s about how kids process language, how the brain processes language. Words and sentences look the same, but it’s daunting to read. Students work so hard to get through paragraphs that by the end of them they don’t remember the meaning. You have to break the reading code. We teach kids how to break that code, so it frees the brain up.” Located at 213 W. Chestnut St., Lancaster, CDC of Lancaster teaches school-age children with dyslexia from Lancaster, Dauphin, York, Chester and Lebanon counties how to read, write and spell. Much of the work is performed in oneon-one settings after school. CDC of Lancaster also trains adults how to tutor kids with dyslexia. All of its services are provided free of charge. “(T he number of people affected by dyslexia is) a hard number to quantify,” said Brown. “It’s estimated that See CDC pg 3
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ven though the competition season does not officially start until next year, members of the Krypton Cougars Robotics Team 2539, composed of students from Palmyra and Hershey, stay busy throughout the year by taking part in various contests. Most recently, the female members of Team 2539 took their record of offseason success to Flourtown, where they participated in the annual GirlP.O.W.E.R. (Preparing Outstanding Women Engineers through Robotics) competition hosted by Team 433. All-female drive teams competed at the event, which is designed to promote women in robotics and STEM fields overall. According to David Walker, lead mentor, the Krypton Cougars entered two robots into the competition, with both finishing as alliance captains. According to www.firstinspires.org, an alliance is a group of teams that compete together, and an alliance captain is the leader of a team that selects other teams to join their alliance. “Their primary robot finished as the No. 1 team overall,” Walker reported. “In the playoffs, Team 2539’s secondary robot achieved multiple upset victories in order to win the competition over some of the strongest teams in FIRST Mid-Atlantic.” Team 2539 takes part in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition program. FIRST teams design, build and operate a robot that is created to complete a specific task. For 2024, the FIRST Robotics Competition game was called Crescendo and it centered around music.