Legos, Notebooks, and other Details.

    We had a great second meeting with the kids today!  Over the weekend, we realized that there are no FTC events located within 100 miles of New Orleans for the rest of this calendar year, so we have decided to add an FLL (First Lego League) team to our roster.  This way, our middle-school kids who are just starting out will be able to get a feel for robotics using a medium they are already familiar with - Legos!  Also, they will get some experience creating an "Engineering Notebook," documenting their design and build processes.  Finally, they will have an event to look forward to and prepare for - that we will be able to get to easily and with little expense.

    The Louisiana Regional Championships for First Lego League are at Holy Cross in December, so we will have some time to get our team ready and still be able to compete.  Meanwhile, our FRC team will be somewhat idle until January of 2015, because they are not allowed to start building the robot for the Spring season before then.  Our current plan is to have our younger students work on FLL projects during the fall, while our middle kids work on FTC under the guidance of "veteran" FRC members.  Hopefully we aren't spreading ourselves too thin with this plan.

    One exciting component of the FLL challenge that I learned about this weekend, is that the Lego robots will not be controlled remotely at all during the course of the challenge.  Our students will have to program all of the robot's functions through a course of up to 20 different tasks!  This makes the Lego League a good stepping-stone for the Tech and Robot Challenges, because it gives our students plenty of experience programming for the autonomous segments of future challenges.

    One last thing I'm pleased with in our group of new recruits is the enthusiasm they showed for getting started on the Engineering Notebook.  I understand from other mentors that getting the notebook complete is often like pulling teeth .  I hope this enthusiasm persists!