November 2nd Meeting Notes

From the Coaches

I apologize for not updating the blog in some time.  The kids have been VERY busy working on the robot as well as the project.

For the project, the kids have designed and created a prototype of the site they proposed to help kids learn magic tricks.  You can see a live version of the site at http://magicmasters14.weebly.com.  Please feel free to check it out and let your kids know what you think.  We had a couple of kids work on some design ideas for a poster to go along with the project so other teams will understand the idea behind our project.

For the robot game, the kids have finished 3 missions completely and have done a portion of 4th mission.  The partial mission has two parts and they have finished the first part, which they will earn 15 points for.  They have decided that working on a different mission would actually be a more effective use of their time.

Outside of the project and robot work they have designed T-shirts for them to wear at the competition.  We will be sending out an email shortly getting T-shirt sizes for all of the kids.

We sent out an email earlier this week that we will be doing our competition on December 6th. 

October 5th Meeting

From the Coaches

The new space is working out really well.  The kids seem to be much more focused on the tasks at hand and are making much better progress on everything they are working on. 

The Project: The kids have decided to tackle how to make learning magic easier.  The kids thought the hardest part about learning magic tricks was having to practice them over and over, and many kids give up because it is hard, and they don't see the big reward at the end.  After some brainstorming, they decided to create a website that will make it more rewarding.

The website will have videos on how to do magic tricks.  They have decided the site would be free to use, and you would start out with some coins.  The coins are used to "buy" access to the different videos on the site.  Then, when you are able to successfully do the trick, you upload a video of yourself, and you can earn additional coins.

This week the kids started working on some faked out pages to showcase what the site would look like and how it might work.  The site is live and you can see it at: http://magicmasters14.weebly.com.

We have also identified a couple of experts that we can contact to share our ideas with.

The Robot: The kids have also been busily working on programming the robot as well as making modifications to the robot itself.  They have removed the ram plate from the front and replaced it with a grabber arm, and made the wheels on the bot larger (in order to accommodate for the grabber arm). They believe the arm will make completing some of their missions much easier.

They have finished a couple of missions (though they need to do some tweaking to the programs since they changed out the tires...this will make their robot go too far since the tires are bigger than the original ones).

Now that they have the arm, they can get to work on tackling some of the other missions!

Other tasks: Last week we had several kids begin working on T-shirt designs.  We reviewed the designs this week, but since we were missing several kids, we decided to hold off on voting on the design until next week.

From the Kids

I apologize, I forgot to ask the kids to give me material for this section.  I will see if I can get some words from my son to put on the blog.

September 28th Meeting

From the Coaches

We met for the first time in our new location, Dancer's Edge!  The space was great for the meeting and really allowed the kids to focus on the tasks at hand rather than being distracted by random things around the room!

I was extremely impressed by the whole team last night.  They accepted the fact that they would not always get to work on their first choice, and dove into the tasks at hand.  We made great progress on many fronts, and can't wait to get back to work next week.  I am really excited about their work so far.

Earlier last week, Coach Blair, myself and Grant met with another team in Ann Arbor to see what they were up to, and talk about organizing some events between the teams.  The other team is more than willing to do some mock competitions, and even mock judging of presentations! 

I asked the kids to write their notes at the meeting.  They used names in the notes, and I would rather not give out real names, so I am using abbreviations for names below.  If you are a team member, you should be able to figure out who is being talked about, otherwise, just know that the whole team contributed!

From the Kids

At today's meeting GREA & COKE finished the apprenticeship programming and worked on mounting a robotic arm that BMEK and CHOL made.  EROT & ECHE worked on our website. CDIM & BDAR finished the apprenticeship model and worked on T-shirt design and lots of nicknames to put on the back of the shirts.

Clarification: 

The mention of "our website" above is in reference to the project.  The kids have decided to do their project on improving learning of magic tricks.  They are designing a website using gamification in order to make it more appealing, and keep people engaged.  As we progress to making the website a reality (or at least something that looks like a real website), we will post links to it so parents can follow along!

September 21st Meeting

From the Coaches

We have been splitting the kids up to work on the many different things that need to be done for the competition.  Last week we split them up based on a random draw.   This week we had a set of tasks that we wanted to try to work on and had the kids volunteer for which ones they wanted to work on.

The night seemed very productive and the kids were having a great time.  We moved several things from the "To Do" column to the "In Progress" column, and even moved some things to the "Done" column.  

We are keeping a board with the tasks we need to do for the year.  The cards to the left are those tasks that we have identified that we want to complete.  We will not complete all of these, and that is ok.  The cards in the middle are those that are currently in progress, and those on the right are done.

And, for those of you interested, I have also taken some pictures of the robot.

Lastly, I wanted to let everyone know that we are looking at moving the meeting to a different location, but at the same time.  I am still working out the details, but will try to send an email out this week.

From the Kids

Project Team:

The meeting was successful.  We had fun!  We looked at magic trick video formats online.  We defined our solution.

We named the team.

Robot team 1:

Worked on the city for the apprenticeship model.  We had problems with the base because everything keeps falling off.  We are working on creating the buildings and attaching them to the base.  Our theme is architecture.

We also finally finished the table models.

Robot team 2:

We programmed the robot to push the apprenticeship model into the circle.  We had to figure out how far to rotate the robot to get it to go where we wanted it.

September 14th Meeting

From the Coaches

We had 7 of the 8 kids show up for the meeting!  We are still open to take in 2 more kids for our team.  If you know of anyone who would be interested in either the project work or the robot work, please feel free to pass our information along to them.

We are making good progress on the robot tasks with one down already!  That means 15 points already programmed! Yay!

We talked about the project as well, and the kids have selected a topic that they will begin researching at the next meeting.  They want to improve the way people learn Magic Tricks.  They already have some ideas, so the next step is doing a little research to see if their ideas are an improvement on the existing techniques.  We have also selected a backup topic in case this one does not pan out.

I will be keeping the Tasks updated on the blog as much as possible, so feel free to look in to see what the kids have accomplished!

From the Kids

September 7th Meetimg

From the Coaches

Things are moving along quite well.   The kids had a great time tonight watching the videos of the missions and project.  We reviewed each of the missions and prioritized which ones they want to work on first.

Thank you to the parents who have sent money for the season.  We will be putting the money to good use for the robot, tournament and other things like T-shirts, etc.

We were contacted by another group in Ann Arbor that has a team and we will likely be setting up a time for the two teams to get together to share strategies and perhaps even get a chance to practice presentations with another team.

We sent out a survey to determine a new meeting time.  It looks like the time we are meeting now works best for the most people.  So, we will continue meeting at our house on Sunday evenings.

From the Kids

Today, robotics meeting of  9/7/14 we went over the challenges and rated them by toughness of ratings 1-5.

Couple of us built the remaining challenges and the other part of us put together the missions on the mission table.
Near the end of our meeting most of us kids there went over the missions and rated them in order for when we practice and right the programs for our robot.

GOOOOOOO dexbots!.!.

August 24th Meeting

From the Coaches

The meeting on Sunday was fantastic!  We had two new faces and nearly completed building the table model (only a tiny bit more to do).  We had some time to teach the new kids about the robot, and even let them play with programming it.

I have sent a survey out for the new meeting times since we want to move the meetings to the school.  I am eagerly awaiting your feedback.  I will be closing the survey out in about a week, so please make sure to get your responses in.

First Lego has finally released what the project and missions are for this year.  The challenge information can be found here.  They have also provided us with some additional resources to use during the season.

At the next meeting we plan on watching the videos about the missions and project.  We will also take some time to make sure the board is set up correctly and start to prioritize which missions we want to tackle, and think about the robot design needed to complete the missions on the board.

It has been a while since I have posted a "From the Kids" section on the blog.  I plan on starting this back up next meeting.  Please remember that I do not post any information about the team members on the blog.