My Summer 2017

Reflection ....

The image above is showing two persons Hiking in the mountains, hiking is an adventurous and fun activity that can lead persons in discovering and learning about new places. My summer this year was similar to hiking. This summer for almost half of the time I was preparing for and competing in a robotics competition in Washington DC. After the competition I was enrolled in an internship with Develop Digitally. I was very active this summer and while being active I was able to learn, have new experiences and enjoy myself.

Last year September was the beginning of robotics at Calabar High. When I found out I was very quick attend club meetings and start participating in the club. In march of 2017 we found out about an international competition called First Global Robotics. Two of the club members including myself was chosen from Calabar to be members of the national team that will be participating in this competition. In preparation for the competition the team came together each week from March until the end of April before External examination to discuss our plans for the competition. After examination and getting the robot kit the team was able to create a fully functioning robot for the competition, although due to the Jamaican Custom system we got the kit late. We left for to Washington Dc on Thursday, 14 of July and returned on Thursday, 21 of July. When we arrived in Washington we got a warm greeting from the old boys from the David 'Waga' Hunt foundation as well as an initiative with an Immaculate old girl, they were our 'parents' for the time .

Throughout the whole competition we were cared for by them. On the first day we found out the location of our rooms and also we packed out and ensure the robot is working, following  in the evening we were hosted to a dinner by our 'Parents'. The Saturday after was the first grouping where all the teams went to Constitution Hall for the first time to find out the location of our boot. When we found our area and was preparing our robot as well as display I felt like an athlete because everyone who came to us ask if all of us is able to run fast.

On that day and the Sunday we practiced and when we had some little glitches we fixed them. On Monday and Tuesday we played matches and had the opening and closing ceremonies.At the end of the competition we won 4 matches of the 6 matches we played and we ranked 45 out of 163 countries. This was pretty good for us although we were looking forward for better, our team was the first combined Jamaican team that was able to compete in the first Robotics Olympics.

This competition style was the first for our Jamaica college teammates that participated in robotics competition before, and participating in this competition achieving that much for the first time especially for most of us like myself was a good achievement. The Wednesday we went on a tour around Washington where we visited sites like the Lincoln Memorial, Martin  Luther  King memorial and Air and space museum that was my personal favorite. We were treated to a Dinner with the Jamaican Ambassador in the evening , then in the night we went go kart racing. This was an amazing experience for me, it was very intriguing to go around networking with other students from the various countries. Learning about the cultures of the countries as well as seeing some of their items from their countries was astonishing, Also to be able to go around and see the different methods each country use to achieve the same task was very interesting. This showed me that there are many ways to achieve something and not everybody will use the same route. It also showed that their is a lot of persons interested in STEM and that's the way the world is going.

This  adventure was one I want to keep to remember for years to come and also I would like students like me to get the chance to show their potential in using STEM to solve world problems as well as to get the opportunity to be apart of a competition like this. The competition will be held next year in Mexico and we want new persons to get the opportunity to represent us and a more diverse group from schools around Jamaica.In Jamaica right now only three schools are known to have a good Robotics club. This is disadvantage for Jamaica as the use of STEM and robotics is growing each day around the world.

A group of us from each school came together and plan on going to schools that are week in robotics or has not start a club properly to help them. We wanted to create a network of school that is practicing robotics in Jamaica that we could share ideas enter competitions and even have our own robotic competitions in Jamaica. My school has started teaching robotics to our Grade 9, and this step is one I wish for each school so that we may be one step ahead of the world and show them that we are not Just Runners but Mathematicians, Programs, Engineers, people who are well in tuned with Science-Technology-Engineering-Math, STEM. The complete video for Jamaica during the competition can be found here.

After the competition I spent 3 weeks doing a summer Internship with Develop Digitally. I did a summer Internship with the company in the previous Year and working with this company is dynamic. While working for this company for the past time I learned a lot in the process while able to accomplish various amount of tasks. These task are very dynamic although surrounded the field of web development, because each task that I always required me to learn something new and it is not the same as before. This year i was able to accomplish 5 Tasks and in achieving those task I was able to learned a lot as discussed in  previous posts. The tasks Accomplished this year are:

• Create a new website for my blogs and put it up on a server, can be found here.
• Port the patwa.org site from Drupal 6 to Drupal 8
• Translate the conversations for a chat bot from Patois to English
• Start the development of a new Drupal module called the Slides module with reveal.js implemented.

This years internship thought me a lot. Otherwise from my tasks I was able to attend a meeting on the discussion on an app that a client needed to be built. That meeting thought me a lot on how to speak to clients as well as what to expect from them in order to develop a good app that will be good for both you and the client. This years Internship great and it ended my summer with me  learning a lot as well as getting job experience.

This summer was adventurous and one to remember. People always say "The devil ave work fi iggle Hands" he didn't have any work for me this summer as I was very active all throughout the time. I was able to participate in a Global Robotics competition creating history being apart of the first Robotics team and learning a lot while being on an Internship with Develop Digitally. This years summer was a charm that leave me to wonder how next year summer will be like.