What does the rock band Alabama Shakes and the Goshen County 4H’s robotics program have in common?
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TORRINGTON – What does the rock band Alabama Shakes and the Goshen County 4H’s robotics program have in common? Both have a single female member, Brittany Howard and Tilly Fogle, respectively, who each brings a unique and indispensable talent to their team. For Fogle, a Southeast School fourth-grader, her intelligence, imagination and inquisitiveness keeps her on an equal footing when she works with or competes against boys her own age.
This is the second year for the 4H robotics program and Fogle has been a member both years, and hopes to see it through until her last year of 4H eligibility.
“We had more girls last year but I’m the only one this year,” Fogle explained. “But I like building stuff … a lot. When I found out the robots were built out of Legos I was really excited, because I love to build with Legos.”
Fogle’s mom, Amanda, completely supports her daughter’s involvement in the robotics program, though she is the only girl, and sees her daughter’s interest as inevitable.
“Tilly has always been interested in computers and that was a big part of it for her,” she said. “She gets really excited about having to actually program the robot to make it complete its tasks.”
There are 21 members of the robotics club, seven teams of three, ages eight to 17 years old. Every school in Goshen County is represented in the club.
“We have about the same number of kids this year as we had last,” said Megan Brittingham, 4-H Extension Educator in charge of the robotics program. “Last year we had four kids on a team, but lesson learned, four kids on a robot team is one kid too many.”
One reason they had so many on a team, Brittingham said, was because they only had four robot kits. This year she was able to add more kits and keep the teams from becoming
overcrowded.
“We had a little bit of interest in robotics when we first started talking about it, but it just exploded when we bought the four kits. But the kits are about
$1,000 apiece.
“This year we were able to get a grant from the recreation board and purchase three more kits. We don’t really have any more kids, but we do have