In today's FIRST LEGO League Oregon Update we will cover these items:
- Robot Game Snaffus
- Robot Design Judging - no table!!!
- Practice Rounds are AWESOME!
- Celebrating ALL Accomplishments!
- FIRST Constellation Contest
- Coach Spaced-Out Challenge: Hint 2
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. If you are in the FIRST Dashboard as a team coach of a registered team for INTO ORBIT you will be added to this list every week for the rest of the competition season. Every update this season begins with IO (Into Orbit) 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) Robot Game Snaffus
I strongly recommend all teams competing this weekend or at state carefully review the
- RO2 - Controllers
- RO3 - Motors
- R08 - Technicians
- R10 - Handling during the match
- R13 - Launching
- R14 - Interrupting
- R15 - Stranding
These are just a few rules I noticed were common issues for several teams.
Coaches - Do not forget your tournament website. It's your one stop collection for helpful documents, team introduction pages, and walkthroughs for rosters and consent forms.
2) Robot Design Judging - no table!!!
We saw two kinds of teams in Robot Judging in week one:
- Those who prepared to use the mat image to describe their mechanical, programming, and overall robot design strategy. These teams communicated at a level that the judges have rarely experienced before and it made it very easy to complete the rubrics.
- Those teams whose coaches didn't read the emails and didn't have a clue how to talk about their engineering experience because they were used to showing a robot run and hoping that was good enough.
This made weekend one with the conversation mats somewhat challenging for our judges. When teams were aware of what to expect, the judging was better than ever. When teams were surprised, judging was uncomfortable and challenging. Please make sure your teams are aware there will be no game table and that they will be expected to explain and talk about their robot design experience orally with their robot, programming printout, and a 2' x 4' mat to show relevant points, strategies, and objects.
3) Practice Rounds are AWESOME!
After several requests with the transition to new scoring software and a streamlined judging deliberation, we were finally able to add practice rounds and they are AWESOME! The very first round on the competition table will be just for practice. This gives your referees a warmup and helps your team know what to expect. Best of all, the referees have been able to detect issues before it affects scoring! It's all the fun, really on the competition table, but the points don't count! It's a wonderful start to the robot competition day.
4) Celebrating ALL Accomplishments!
All teams are soaring, some just don't show it as easily as others! One of the hardest things about the Qualifying Tournaments is the variety of skillsets and history of the teams that are coming together. Some teams lose their code as soon as they arrive and have to spend the entire day just trying to recover. Some teams are challenging the game designers to keep the robot game hard enough to last the best teams in the world 9 months, not just the 9 weeks of FIRST LEGO League. This is why it is so incredibly important to recognize what is an accomplishment for your team and to celebrate it! I was honored to be the emcee at two events this first weekend. One of the events may even have had a team that set the current high score for Oregon (219), however; that doesn't make me nearly as excited as the team that spent 2 rounds working on Crater Crossing only to come back and do it over and over and over again in the next round. Sure they only get points for crossing once, but the point is - that was a tremendous success for that team! I'd rather celebrate with that team than a team that was disappointed they only scored 150 and not 200. However, if they want to celebrate that 150, I will join them in cheer too! Know what is hard for your team, what will be success. Find that thing and celebrate it when it happens. Then do me a favor - send me an email and tell me all about it! I love hearing about all of the teams successes, big and small!
5) FIRST Constellation Contest
A constellation is a group of stars that forms an imaginary outline or pattern on the celestial sphere. The game designers at FIRST® hid constellations on the game mat to encourage you to look up at the night sky. Which ones have you found? Email your findings to fll-media@firstinspires.org for a chance to win some fun swag. We’ll draw a random winner from all correct guesses received by 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, Dec. 20.
*This contest is not being administered by ORTOP
6) Coach Spaced-Out Challenge: Hint 2
We know that the tournament day doesn't leave a lot for coaches to actually do, after all it's the day for the team to show all they have learned and take the lead.... you are little more than a bathroom escort and food provider here. That's one of the reasons I am providing the second hint to the spaced-out challenge. I've had so much fun, getting to add this creative touch to each email since IO2. It's really inspired my sense of adventure, and I hope it's inspired the imaginations of your teams as well!
I couldn't be more impressed by the teams in Oregon this year. From your creative ideas, to your remarkable robots every team is outstanding! What really shines for me is our solid commitment to the FIRST Core Values. Seeing teams using their Core Values in the arena, in the pits, and outside the judging rooms - it's almost magical. I have such tremendous hope for our future, both here on the planet and as we explore our solar system further.
I want to congratulate all of the teams who competed this past weekend, whether you advanced or not I hope this will not be the end of your season.
Teams competing this weekend, best of luck to you! I wish I could see all of your teams, but I'll see as many of you as I can!
Best Wishes,
Loridee
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