THE SHOALS-The excitement is building around the Northwest Alabama BEST Robotic Competition this year! This coming Saturday, October 8, 2016, 9:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. the Shoals Chamber of Commerce and Northwest-Shoals Community College will host 22 schools at the 2016 Bet the Farm Game Day for the BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.
Game day has the excitement of a championship basketball game with 
crowds cheering, music, bands, cheerleaders, mascots and the works.
The season Kicked-Off on August 27. Teams have 6-weeks to complete the design and engineering process for their robots and other competitive elements. Game Day will be the exciting culmination of all their hard work of the research, design and engineering process.
BEST invites middle and high school student teams will build one-of-a-kind robots with only the materials provided to each team by the Hub (the Chamber and NW-SCC). These robots are built to accomplish the specific challenges of this year’s game – Bet the Farm. This year, each team will design a robot to accomplish various tasks on a modern farm. Teams will harvest corn, tomatoes and lettuce, water their crops, collect and plant seed, store the corn, take their produce to market, and herd pigs which have escaped from their pen.
It is said that “BEST is a workforce development program, cleverly disguised as a robotics competition” and it safely allow students to “fail forward” and learn from their mistakes. This is all part of the design-engineering process. Engineers rarely get it right the first time. They design, build, test, evaluate, re-design, build, test, and so on, until they develop the end product. Failing is part of the process, but you learn something every time.
BEST Robotics’ long term goal strives for students to become interested in careers in science, technology, engineering and math (S.T.E.M.), while including educational content about various real world industries. This year’s game theme will not only teach these principles, but may help boost entrance into career paths surrounding the mining industry and the commodities markets, perhaps introducing some students to new areas of interest. As part of each team’s Project Engineering Notebook, they must include a research paper on the mining industry and how it affects the commodities markets.
In addition to the Robotics game challenge, the students must compile a comprehensive Project Engineering Notebook, and are encouraged to develop an entire “company” around their product. The teams have the option to compete in an Oral Marketing Presentation, to design and build a Trade Show Booth, a web site, a creative video about their product or their company, team-wear designs and more.
BEST Robotics 6-week challenge presents real-world situations the students might find in the workplace. This program initiates critical thinking and problem solving skills, tunes time management and encourages teamwork.
BEST is free to participating schools. Students from counties in Alabama and Tennessee have joined the Northwest Alabama BEST Robotics hub to participate in this exciting event that enhances students’ career and workforce knowledge and skills. While balancing school and other extracurricular activities, the students have only 6-weeks to complete the design, engineering, building and marketing process. They will build, test and redesign the robot, as well as develop all their company’s marketing elements by Game Day on October 8.
All BEST events are free and the public is welcome and encouraged to attend. BEST Game Day is Saturday, October 8 at Northwest-Shoals Community College gym in Muscle Shoals. The doors will open at 8 a.m. The games should begin around 9:30 a.m. and usually concludes around 5 p.m. For more information about NW AL BEST visit https://nwalabamabest.org
2016 PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS
Addison High School
Belgreen High School
Brooks High School
Central High School
Covenant Christian School
Creekside Academy
Florence High School
Lauderdale County High School
Lexington School
Loretto High School
Meek High School
Moulton Middle & Lawrence Co. High
Muscle Shoals Career Academy
Phil Campbell High School
Phillips High School
Red Bay High School
Rogers High School
Russellville City Schools
Shoals Christian School
Tharptown High School
Waterloo School
Wilson School
Media Release/Stephanie S. Newland
VP of Workforce Readiness
Shoals Chamber of Commerce
