Posted on 03/02/23
Baltimore, MD - Mar. 2, 2023 - On Tuesday, Cheder Chabad, TA, and TI came together for the CIJE Baltimore Robotics Tournament. The Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE) has been helping hundreds of Jewish day schools across the country implement STEM curricula. This includes running a VEX Robotics League that caters to the unique demands of Jewish day schools.
Mr. Joseph Saltzman, CIJE’s Maryland Program Manager, organized and led the tournament. This is the first Jewish interschool engineering competition held in Maryland since the last event he organized in 2020. “I have enjoyed helping the Baltimore schools develop engineering programs over the past years”, remarks Mr. Saltzman. He “loves how these unique schools are able to join together for a fun and educational event.”
TI hosted the robotics tournament. You could see the school filled with the enthusiasm and smiles of over 60 student engineers. Students elected to participate in extracurricular robotics clubs where they learned about mechanical engineering and computer programming. Each year students are given a different robotics challenge. In teams, students researched, programmed, and designed their own robots. This year’s challenge requires robots to release discs from dispensers and shoot them into scoring zones. Students score extra points by having their robots expand to touch contact points. Dr. Insel (TI) thanks CIJE for organizing the program, commenting “We appreciate everything you do for us and respect how much hard work it takes.”
The tournament was particularly exciting during the final rounds. It came down to the final match buzzer as the robots struggled to score a last point in a battle for first place. In the end, an alliance of two TA teams won first place by a single point with an alliance of a TI and TA team coming in second. The top teams from each school will be traveling to New York for a final robotics tournament at the end of March. Rabbi Menda (Cheder Chabad) says the tournament “was very fun!” and they are looking forward to the next event in NY.
FIRST PLACE
Wildebeest (Baruch Cohen, Aryeh Anisfeld)
Victor (Ben Casper, Daniel Schwartz, Avi Stewart, Rafi Gibber)
SECOND PLACE
TI-1 (Avraham Shmuel Edelman, Mordechai Esrig, Yechezkel Esrig, Yechezkel Gholian)
Bob (Moshe Lerner, Daniel Levi, Binyamin Lewin)
AUTONOMOUS
Labot James (Yisroel Toplin, Shlomo Snyder, Yisroel Bloch, Chanoch List)
Mazel Tov!
