Posted by Greg Cappelli

WORKING WITH LIBRARY

Over the past number of years the Rotary Club of Ellicottville has been funding equipment to provide special training to community youth.  Working with the Library, Rotary has been supplying laptop computers for anyone to use when in the Library, this year providing two new laptops to begin to replace older models.
 
Pictured (L-R): Laura Flannigan (Library Director), Marcia Stoddard, Tina Barrett, Greg Cappelli & David Blanchard, Kathy Trost (Rotary Club of Ellicottville), Reg Madison (Rotary District Governor).
 
The Rotary Club of Ellicottville, in discussions with Ellicottville Library Director Laura Flannigan decided to provide a fun way to get kids involved with robotics and coding.  Laura wanted to have some after school workshops to open up these exciting disciplines to our local students.  There will also be kits available for use by anyone interested in creating outside of the formal workshops.
Working with the Rotary District 7090, the Ellicottville club applied for and was approved for a grant to buy 6 Airblock Modular Drones and 6 sets of Modular Robotics “Cubelets”.  The Modular Drones and Cubelet kits are a fast and easy way to inspire kids to become better thinkers. 
 
Cubelet robot blocks make robot building remarkably simple. There's no wrong way to build with Cubelets just snap the robot blocks together and see what robot behaviors emerge.
The drones come with magnetic attachments so configuration is only limited by the student’s imagination. They can build their drone without any tools in any mode: drone mode, hovercraft mode, triangle mode, spider mode, etc.   Then, they can develop a code using drag-and-drop graphical programming software to learn programming & aerodynamics, control the robot, and get creative to enhance performance.
 
The Rotary District provides a matching grant of up to $2,000.00 to clubs that meet the criteria annually.  The Rotary Club of Ellicottville contributed $2,500.00 for a total of $4,500.00 to provide the new equipment for use by our community. 
 
According to Ms. Flanigan, “The library greatly appreciates the generosity of the Rotary Club of Ellicottville and Rotary District 7090 and the strong relationship that we maintain”.