Greetings FIRST LEGO League Oregon,
In today's FIRST LEGO League Oregon Update we will cover these items:
- Finding Your Tournament Assignment
- "Do Good"
- Printing your Team Roster
- Celebration of Life for the Father of Gracious Professionalism
- Rookie Team Looking for Local Teams
- Parents as Volunteers
- Where is Loridee? - and a special request
- Using the Team Meeting Guide
If you are new to this email or blog this is the place where you will find all of the OREGON specific FIRST LEGO League information, as well as helpful guides to get your team through the CITY SHAPER FIRST LEGO League season. Coaches and team administrators in the FIRST system for the CITY SHAPER season will be added every Monday until March, automatically. Every update this season begins with CS (CITY SHAPER) and a number, that number lets you know which update it is, if you miss an update you can find it on our blog.
1) Finding Your Tournament Assignment
Your FIRST LEGO League Qualifying Tournament Assignment is live if your team has paid their qualifying tournament application fee. If your team number and name are yellow, I have your qualifying tournament application, but you haven't paid yet. Please email me if you are having problems paying for the Qualifying Tournament Application fee. I would like to help your team have this opportunity if I can.
2) "Do Good"
Thank you for the positive GIVE! first-year kickoff raising $500 in our first few days the last week from 10 donors. Our goal is $10,000. Give at ortop.org/GIVE to win incentives and help ORTOP achieve its goals around the state.
3) Printing your Team Roster
Here is how to print the roster.
- Lead Coach/Mentor 1 or Lead Coach/Mentor 2 log in to www.firstinspires.org *Note: the Team Admin does NOT have access to the team roster
- Go to Team Contacts
- You can print either from the upper right corner of your contact screen or from the contacts dropdown menu on your main screen.
How do you get your kids on the roster? Yes, we usually start here, but it is a bit more confusing and since there are two options and printing the roster is required for both, I started there.
The Digital Way - does not work for team members who are not 9 as of January 1, 2019
- Every parent will need to create a FIRST account at www.firstinspires.org
- Every parent will need to create a profile for their child, then sign the consent form and apply to your team. They will need the team number to do this.
- As a coach, you will then need to go into the Dashboard and accept each child to your team. You can NOT be the parent for all of the children as you do not have the legal authority to sign the consent form for other people's children, sorry.
- Double-check your roster to make sure each child's parent signs the consent form. It's very easy to miss.
The Pen and Paper Way - perfectly valid for any team member!
- Log in to the Dashboard at www.firstinspires.org
- Go into your Contacts
- Scroll down to team members
- Print the English or Spanish language consent form for as many team members and chaperones as you need.
- Handwrite each person's name to the roster you printed above (in ink please).
- Staple each person's signed consent and release form to the back.
Repeat this process if your team attends the state championship.
There you are! If you have questions, please consult the link above. Then if you are still lost, email Loridee-Wetzel@ortop.org
4) Celebration of Life for the Father of Gracious Professionalism®
Last month, we shared the heartbreaking news that Dr. Woodie Flowers, Co-Chair of the FIRST Executive Advisory Board and Distinguished Advisor to FIRST, passed away at age 75. Woodie, an innovative MIT professor who helped Dean Kamen develop the FIRST Robotics Competition and coined the FIRST ethos of Gracious Professionalism®, has been an incredible supporter of our mission throughout our 30 years.
As part of our community-wide efforts to celebrate Woodie’s life and honor his legacy, FIRST will host a Celebration of Life for Woodie Flowers on December 9 at 4:00 p.m. E.T. We invite you and our entire global community to join us in the virtual event broadcast on FIRSTtv and to share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag #WoodieFlowers. We encourage local FIRST communities around the world to gather together to watch the broadcast, celebrate Woodie’s life, and reflect on how to keep his legacy living on.
We will broadcast the Celebration of Life live from the Dana Center, Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. We understand some FIRST teams may wish to join us in person. Our event space is limited, so we have opened a lottery system to allow as many teams to be represented at the event as possible. One representative from your team can submit for the lottery here.
5) Rookie Team Looking for Local Teams
A Eugene area rookie team is looking to make a connection to exchange ideas and learn with a more experienced team. Are there teams who might be willing to reach out to to them and maybe connect virtually to talk about what your team is doing and how they are preparing for the tournament. The kids are feeling a bit behind and it seems like they're losing some motivation. We meet every Thursday from 2-4p and have access to Zoom. If your team or team members are interested in connecting please email Anthony at awhite@marcola.k12.or.us
6) Parents as Volunteers
Not all parents like to sit in the bleachers. I know this very well because I'm one of them. If you have parents that are looking for a more active role, or who just want a more comfortable chair to catch up on reading or a handcraft they can do while watching a timer, we have lots of roles for them at your qualifying tournament! They'll even get to see their team perform in the robot game! Please invite these parents to sign up to volunteer at www.firstinspires.org OR have them use the direct link from the ORTOP tournament page. Volunteers do need a www.firstinspires.org account. Parents and spare coaches are not eligible to be a judge or a referee in Oregon unless there are special circumstances.
7) Where is Loridee? - and a special request
My request to all of you. Please upload your photos! Upload your teams being amazing, being goofy, being themselves. If you take photos at your tournament, please share them. I won't be able to be there, but I don't want to miss any of it while I'm healing. Make sure you get your team to their event. I don't care if you show up in your bathrobes with a box of parts and a vague idea of what you are doing - go! The tournament is a magical experience where 50% of the experience of FIRST LEGO Leauge is. Remember you are going to get your best, that is your win. You can't control any other team, but you can be your best. That's all I ask from each of you, brushed hair or not.
Thank you - I am hoping to see many of you at state, whether you advance or not!
8) Using the Team Meeting Guide
Inspection
Goals to check off this week
- Team should determine their mission sequence
- All team members should know how to run the robot mission(s)
- Decide the creative medium for your 5-minute live Innovation Project Presentation
- Identify an expert to share your ideas with
- Contact the mentor by phone or email
- Team should identify the Core Values used this meeting
Key things for coaches right now is to step back and help ease frustrations. Your role in instructing is over. Everything from here on out it is all team decisions. Provide a productive working environment, frustration breaks, and aid in Core Value enhanced communications around decisions. While your team dreams big remember Keep it Simple, Silly. One step at a time, one change at a time will be much easier to fix than a bunch of untested changes all at once.
Make sure all team members get an opportunity to work on all aspects, building, programming, and the Innovation Project. This is a time when more experienced or more assertive team members may exclude those who want to learn, but don’t want to get in the way. Especially watch for quiet kids, minority students, and girls who may have a life experience of stepping into the shadows. In FIRST, we want all of these kids to contribute to the strength of our team, and they often have not yet been provided the skills to speak up, or continue working when they don’t feel they are the best at it. You have moved from coach/mentor to facilitator.
After my blurb above, I'm not sure what to add down here in the space where I talk directly to you. I am in the office until the 20th and am working very hard to leave everything as complete as possible. Please be kind to each other and remember, even though this is the hardest part of the season, you have already done so much. Remember how those kids were when you started? Are those the kids you see now? I don't think so. Thank you for all your time and energy coaches.
Best Wishes,
Loridee
Best Wishes,
Loridee
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