The FIRST robotics season for 2009 has finished for team 424. The team did great in the Finger Lakes Regional, earning the 6th seed in the finals. Not bad for what is essentially a JV team. Team 340, the Varsity team, squeaked into the finals and ended up in 2nd place. Not bad, two teams from the same school making it to the finals, out of 50 teams.
Last year I brought both Eric and Rudy to the regional competition, not knowing much about the program. It was at this point that Eric became interested in joining, and being unable to get his school to start a team, joined up with Churchville-Chili HS, a school to the south of his district.
Watching teams from around the state and Canada yesterday, something dawned on me. Many of the schools have large teams, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 members. Each of these teams only build one robot. Churchville, with fewer members build two robots. There are other jobs on the teams other than building the robots, publicity, bookkeeping, fund raising, community outreach to name a few. So there are jobs for these students. But the real reason many join is to get experience in the engineering end. How much hands on experience can you have with a large team and only one robot? When you get down to it, really there about 10 members of each team that understand and really work on these machines. What having two teams allow is more students to work on a robot, and members to help each team build and problem solve.
FIRST has been a great thing for Eric to be involved with. I have not seen him so excited about anything except when he was little and played with Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Other than these two, he has sort of been doing stuff, but not whole heartedly. I have seen his personal growth in the last few months, he has gained confidence, learned to work with others and became a leader. I have never seen this part of his personality before, and perhaps he shows it in other places, but for me to witness him in action made me proud to be his father.
I am looking forward to next season, if Eric stays on the same team, he has several other sophomores who work well together moving on with him. We all are looking forward to how this will all turn out.
My other FIRST Posts
First FIRST
Second FIRST
Third FIRST
Fourth First
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 03/07/2009
Blog of the "Unquiet Librarian"
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 03/06/2009
Twitter for Teachers: Home - Twitter for Teachers
Work on a collaborative eBook on how to use twitter in the classroom
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 03/05/2009
The Innovative Educator: Ten Ideas for Getting Started with 21st Century Teaching and Learning
Steps to becoming and innovative educator
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 03/04/2009
Website recommended by Bob Sprankle for keeping up with the 5 things you accomplished today - see his blog post (also linked here) for how he uses it.
Doris - Simplify your life and get things done with Doris!
Free productivity tool - looks a lot like Remember the Milk to me. Not sure if I'm going to swap but would love to hear from people who like it
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 03/03/2009
Finally, any theoretical benefit of practice homework must be weighed against the effect it has on students’ interest in learning. If slogging through worksheets dampens one’s desire to read or think, surely that wouldn’t be worth an incremental improvement in skills. And when an activity feels like drudgery, the quality of learning tends to suffer, too. That so many children regard homework as something to finish as quickly as possible – or even as a significant source of stress -- helps to explain why it appears not to offer any academic advantage even for those who obediently sit down and complete the tasks they’ve been assigned. All that research showing little value to homework may not be so surprising after all.
Plagiarism Stoppers : A Teachers Guide
Links to information on plagiarism, how to detect it, how to stop it, how to educate about it.
Hulu - Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
This is a very viral video that a lot of the kids are talking about. (It came out LAST June but now is a hot seller on Amazon.) Neil Patrick Harris wants to join the Evil League of Evil. It is 42 minutes long. It is ironic how much of entertainment is becoming viral -- television can no longer control what gets watched - it gets "put out there" and then they see what is watched. In many ways, this viral way of video viewing is very interesting.
Not saying this should be watched -- it is quite hot with many college students. I could see how much that is said would resonate with college kids.
Listen to the vernacular - even though some of you may find this very napolean dynamite-ish.
"I'm just trying to change the world. I don't have time for a grudge match for every poser in a parka."
It grows on you -- stick with it.
Oh and be warned there are few words in here. But, no rating to catch it! (not sure why not rating movies just released online.) This is sponsored by XO laptop.Reading Living and Learning with New Media (report) Via @heyjudeonline
Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project
LIFE photo archive hosted by Google
A new post about Google's LIFE photo archive. Count the ways to use these in your classroom!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Diigo bookmarks for today 03/02/2009
New way to publish to create interactive publications. Anyone used this?
Google Apps for Education Coming to Moodle : February 2009 : THE Journal
Pilot project taking place on integrating Google Apps for Education into Moodlerooms.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of educators group favorite links are here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
