Opening Up Registrations

Well we've had great response from people all over the Springs for this new camp. My morning camp for 8-10 year olds in June is officially FULL! I'm so excited about running this day camp and grateful for the people who have signed up. Since I'm only registering 12 kids per camp and my first session is full, I decided to open up the afternoon camps to younger kids as well. There's been much more interest coming from the under 10 crowd so I'm going to make it possible for them to sign up in the afternoon as well.

How will this affect the original intent of the afternoon class for 11 and up? Well my first plan is to group kids by age groups so older kids will be with older kids. Depending on the level of experience for each group, I may have the older kids build slightly more difficult models and work on more different scenarios for their simple machines. That means more, "What happens if...." "Can you build a car that..." They will have more open ended questions for their builds. Finally we'll all come together for snacks and team building.

Have You Seen Me?

Couple of weeks ago got a sticker on my back window. If you have already registered or plan on registering, I'll give you a $10 discount or refund (whichever the case may be) on your registration. My only stipulation is that you have to tell me what I'm driving, where you saw me and what day that was. Seeing me at the Briargate YMCA doesn't count.

This offer good until the end of the second series of camps on July 22nd and I can't give you the refund if you see me AFTER your camp has already taken place.

YoungBotBuilders Summer Camps 2011 @ Briargate YMCA

Some of the things we'll be building this summer.

This summer I'll be running a LEGO camp at the Briargate YMCA. Thought it would be a fun experience for kids to do some constructive thinking. More and more kids are taking part of science and math oriented camps. These camps usually have activities that you couldn't fit into a normal school day. However, much of the skills practiced at camp such as cooperation, problem solving, critical thinking and discovery learning are what they need in the "real world" yet they may not have time for in school since there are deadlines to meet and tests to prepare for. I love the idea of taking our time to build, discover and work together to form the best solution. It's a luxury which may only be reserved for afterschool or summertime endeavors; especially as the kids get older. They are too busy with all their college prep or AP classes that there's no room for an elective such as building with LEGO pieces.

This first camp mainly deals with the concept of simple machines and how they interact with motors. Didn't want to deal with programming Mindstorms robots for my first endeavor into LEGO entrepreneurship. I may consider that for next year though. I think there's plenty to learn using the LEGO Education curriculum and the Simple and Motorized Mechanisms set.

So if you are at all interested, sign up quickly as space is rather limited.

FLL Teambuilding Activities

One of the major components in FIRST LEGO League is teamwork. How does the work get divided? How well do teammates work together to solve a problem? What happens when there's a disagreement? Does everyone on the team get a chance to participate? All these issues require a certain amount of teamwork to happen. During our FLL time, we would incorporate games so kids could 1) get a break and 2) enjoy working with each other in another problem solving capacity.

Here's a list of a few team building ideas we used last year as well as some new ones I'll be using this year...

1. Untie the HUMAN KNOT. The kids loved this exercise. We would pull it out every few weeks. When we first started, there was no end to the confusion and lack of coordination on the kid's part. But by the end of the season, they figured out how to appoint a "director" so tell how to undo the knot and they were able to untie the knot. Here's directions.


2. Moon Landing Team Exercise. For this activity, I divided kids into teams of 3 and they discussed the priorities for equipment for you to take if you landed on the dark side of the moon and had to meet your landing party on the other side. It's a very interesting exercise in communication and logic. Kids had to justify why they thought one piece of equipment was better than others. Much like they will have to do when they want to run a robot or program a certain way. Here's directions and worksheets.

3. Blind Build. I split up kids into two teams. Both teams get the exact same 7 - 10 LEGO pieces. Team #1 builds something with all the pieces. It doesn't have to be anything useful or pretty. They just have to build something with all the bricks connected. Team #1 then has to explain how to build their contraption to Team #2, but neither team can actually see what the other team has. I put one team behind a counter so they couldn't actually see each other. The goal is to work together to explain and understand something w/o the visual senses. Each kid can take turns adding onto the building and explaining how to build. Then we switch roles. Team #2 builds and explains their build to Team #1. 

4. Newspaper Table. Using only newspaper and tape, have kids build the strongest structure that would be able to hold up very heavy books. You aren't allowed to just stack newspapers on top of one another. You'll have 10 minutes to build. The structure must be higher than 6 inches.

5. Toothpicks & Marshmallows Bridge. For this I used some pretty old mini-marshmallows. They needed to go anyways. I had two teams build the longest spanning bridge out of toothpicks and marshmallows. They had 10 minutes to figure it out. Couldn't believe that some kids wanted to eat those marshmallows afterward! Yukk. I think gumdrops would also work well.

6. Freeze Tag. This is the same game we all played when we were younger. Kids ran around the back yard just to get the wiggles out.

7. Tall Towers. Our regional FLL teamwork challenge was to give the kids a sheet of paper and tape. They had to build the tallest structure they could with just that. Most kids figured out that you should cut the paper. I think they got 5 minutes.

8. Build a Moving Device. I learned about this at a the Virtual Robotics Summit during one of the talks. Split the group into smaller teams. For each team, you'll need to have one Mindstorms brick. Next count out about 60 other parts from the kits. Each team gets the exact same parts. You can decide which parts they get, but don't give them any wheels or gears. They have to build the best moving object out of these parts. You also decide what constitutes the "best" robot. They'll have to program this object to move. This might take a bit longer as an activity, but it will get the juices flowing for how to build the most effective and efficient movable device with whatever they have on hand. I love that they don't get wheels!

9. Information Exchange. In this activity, kids organize themselves according to specific instructions such as ordering themselves in ways such as by date of birth, by birth month, by number of people in your family, state where you were born in alpha order. All these are good ways of people getting to know what another. This is good for a first time meeting so they can get to know one another and they have to communicate with each other.

10. Giant Egg Drop. Kids divide into an even number of groups. Each group gets a goody bag filled with materials that should help a raw egg survive a two story drop. I would do this outside unless you have easy to clean floors. Each group has 15 minutes to build the best protection for their egg. The team with the egg that survives the longest drop wins. Here's things you could put in a paper lunch bag: 2 tongue depressors, 4 rubber bands, paper cup, 1 sheet of newspaper, 10 toothpicks, 1 foot of masking tape, 1 raw egg.

11. Lego Bridge Contest. Fill a small lunch paper bags. Each paper bag gets exactly the same LEGO pieces.  Make sure you put sturdy construction pieces as well as odd, small decorative pieces.  Give them to your kids and tell them they have an "x" number of minutes to construct a sturdy bridge out of the odd pieces of LEGO .  When time is up, get a can of tuna, and see if the bridges that each person built can support the can. Keep adding cans until the bridge can't hold anymore.  Award points for best design, construction, etc.  Kids love the excitement and the thought of the bridge falling apart under the weight of so many cans.

12. Sheet of Paper Step Through Game. The kids required a few hints, but in the end, they got it. You take an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. They have to figure out how to cut it in a continuous strip so that two kids can step through it. Kind of tricky, but you can see their noggins at work. Got it from this site. Also had some others I may use in the future.

13. The Cooperative Hula Hoop. This activity required a lot of concentration. The point was to have one person stand in middle of a hula hoop that's on the ground. The other team members, possibly up to four surround the outside of the hoop. The objective is to bring the hula hoop up over the head of the person in the middle. You might pick the shortest person to make it easier. The "catch" is that the team members can only use their two extended index fingers. Their index fingers cannot wrap around the hula hoop. The hula hoop just has to balance on their two extended fingers. The other rule is that ALL team members have to maintain contact with the hula hoop at all times. This was actually tough to do and the kids had to spend some time with strategy. Mostly what was difficult was there was more than one person giving instructions.

Tougher than it looks!

Close up of finger formation.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the judges are paying special attention to the process. It's not so much about the solution as much as how the kids got there.

14. Organize ANYTHING! OK I'll have to admit that this is a somewhat selfish team builder, but it saved me so much time. I had just purchased 6 LEGO WeDo sets for use in camps and as we know all too well, things just arrive in plastic bags and a box. There's a useful tray and two levels of space we could use in this box. The kids had 10 minutes to organize all 6 boxes in the most efficient method possible for kids who would use these kits to figure out. It was a great way to "kill two birds with one stone". They had never seen these kits before so they had to really think and talk about how to best sort the pieces. Then they had a limited amount of time so they had to divide the work. In the end they chose to sort them by color.

Top level sorted by color (mostly).

Bottom level mostly greys.

Extrapolate to all other things needing done and having the kids figure out how to do it. Further thoughts I had: Can you clean out and organize my closet in the most efficient way? umm... Take them to a food pantry and have them work together to accomplish as task there. (This would be a longer team building session.)

The point is that these team building sessions can be used for the benefit of others as well.

15. Popsicle Stick Triangles. The following activity tries to encourage kids to think outside of the box.  Each team is given 6 popsicle sticks with which they need to make 4 equilateral triangles. I gave them about 10 minutes to talk about it and try to figure it out. My kids couldn't solve the problem. They kept thinking in 2 dimensions. The answer was to discover that by looking for a 3-D solution, the problem can be easily solved by constructing a pyramid.

16. What Can You Do With a Coat Hanger? Kids are shown a coat hanger and asked to individually list different possible uses. They are given the freedom to use any material, size or shape of a hanger; they may imagine cutting it, shrinking it, using many of them, etc. They had to think individually about creative uses for the coat hanger and then come together to agree on a specific use. Then I made the kids come up with a "commercial" to try to sell me the coat hanger. It was funny. It took about 20 minutes.

17. Design a Tool. In this activity kids will use their creativity to develop a new tool to safely retrieve a golf ball from a garbage can. The kids cannot touch the garbage can, but the tool can. You need a lot of materials for this, but each team doesn't have to use everything. They have 20 minutes to design, build and test the device. I would use a box or any container to simulate a garbage can. This is fun because you are given so many items and the team has to come to a consensus as to what they will use. If fact there's probably enough here to build at least 3 "tools".

Materials (per team):

1) 1 paper lunch bag (yes, you can also use the bag in your build)
2) 1 golf ball
3) 4 pieces of 4" string
4) 4 drinking straws
5) pair of wooden chopsticks
6) 4 small paper clips
7) 4 rubber bands
8) 5 Post-It notes (3" x 3")
9) 3 pipe cleaners
10) 1 pencil
11) 1 foot piece of masking tape

Reflections After Being an FLL Rookie Coach

Best Research Award at Regionals

Top Ten Lessons After My First FLL Year

1. Expect to recruit the help of at least 4 - 6 other parents or individuals. Last year we participated in 1 Rookie Booster, 1 Scrimmage, 1 Regional Tournament. For each of those events, there are wonderful volunteers who spend countless hours organizing the events. In exchange they ask for help either the day before or day of the event. Each team that participates donates a couple of volunteers; and rightly so. I didn't realize this until we were into the season and then I had to ask parents. Although they willingly donated their time, it still would have been better had I known up front how much help I would have to ask for.

2. Not everything is what it seems. Our team did fine for our first year. I was actually a little relieved when we didn't make it to the state tournament. We were on the verge of burnout. However, I still secretly envied some of those other Rookie teams that actually did make it to State. I was a volunteer photographer and got to roam around the State competition pretty freely. Anyways, I spoke to another rookie coach who made it to state. It turns out even though the team did very well in the way of points and awards, only one kid did all the programming work. It really wasn't a "team". In fact much of the time was spent trying to corral the other kids into working instead of goofing off. That taught me to be careful about judging from outside results or appearances. Sure they made it to state, but not everyone really participated. That made me wonder... how many parents are actually doing the work? or mentors doing the work? or what are the kids really learning from this?

3. It's OK to show the kids some techniques to programming and problem solving. Last year I was so stuck on the motto, "Kids do the work" that I just threw them into solving the programming problems. Part of it was that I was also learning myself so I didn't know what I didn't know. I really wanted them to figure EVERYTHING out on their own. This year I'll try to coach with a little more teaching.

4. Get started on the Research Project right away. Even before we knew the outcome of the year's tournaments we got word of the next year's theme. It being "Food Factor" for 2011, I would start the kids already thinking of what they want to research and what problem they would want to solve. I had it in my mind that we could not start our research until after the September launch, but that's not really the case.

5. Don't push the kids to work for too long. Last year I tried extending our Friday sessions by incorporating dinner (Pizza Night) into the program. My kids were aged 10 - 12. We'd work for 2 1/2 hours, have pizza and then work for another 1 1/2 hours. That was too much for both me and the kids. By the end of the night our brains were all mush. I decided to add additional practices during the week instead of running marathon nights at the end of the week.

6. Ten kids is a a lot to manage. I've heard this one before. Don't feel obligated to max out your group. However, as a first year coach, I was grateful to have so many people participate and help pay for the start up expenses. It costs much more the first year so I wanted to spread the costs. Well next year I won't be maxing out my numbers. That old saying, "the more the merrier" does not apply here. I was told 6 -7 is a good number.

7. Use more sensors. As stated earlier, we got through the challenges w/o using a single sensor. It was a lot of trial and error that could have been avoided had we used the technology available to us. No one was really in a position to force the kids to use sensors since we were all learning ourselves. Next year will be different.

8. Don't be afraid to be the grown up in charge. Set down simple, but clear rules. Even though the kids loved being there and time seemed to always go by too quickly whenever we met, lay down the law so that all can enjoy their time and be the most productive. Have a heart to heart with the parents if you must.

9. Don't skimp on the team building. When you are working feverishly to prepare for tournaments or get your project into gear, it can seem like wasted time to take a break and do a team building activity, but this really helped us cement good camaraderie in the times where things get stressful and tough. The group really gelled well and creating that sense of friendship doesn't always come from a building or programming environment. I felt like we did this right last year.

10. Have fun! I'm so glad the kids had fun last year. We didn't have the best robot design, didn't use a single sensor, didn't always have all the parts we needed, didn't know what we were doing, but.... we did have fun! We also built a nice community and helped each other whenever someone needed it.

What lessons have you learned as an FLL Coach?

Technology Dumbing Us Down?

Had a conversation with a professional photographer who got the latest and greatest camera from Canon, the 5D Mark II. He says it's like a camera from another world it's so far out there technologically. It does so much for the photographer that you can get kind of lazy and actually regress in your skills if you are not careful. What else... the GPS? Calculators? Clocks? Digital cash registers?

What does this have to do with Legos? Well this past weekend, my son spent it building the ultimate in Mindstorms gadgets. It was the Rubik's Cube solver called the Tilted Twister. It took about 2 hours to build and then a lot of work to get the new cube we bought to wear itself down enough in order to work right on the contraption. Used to be in the old days, we actually had to learn how to solve the Rubik's cube with our hands. Now you just download instructions and a program and you're good to go. Just pop that little unsolved baby into the slot and out comes the completed cube.

Ahh technology... is it actually making us more stupid? Well someone actually came up with the building design and program to solve the cube.Now if we could all push ourselves to seek to continue to challenge our minds.

Join us next weekend as we work on the Soduku solver built with the Mindstorms.

Math Class in Robotics?

I made the kids figure angles turned and distances traveled for their robots in proportion to degrees rotated. They had to do some... MATH! This was not what they were thinking when they signed up for this class.

What I love about the robot calculations is that the kids actually see how to apply concepts they've learned in math. "What if I really don't want to guess how many degrees it takes for the robot to go 3 ft?" Granted, even the calculations aren't exact, but it certainly gets you in the ballpark.

Kids are drawn to these robots, but I hope this makes them also appreciate all the math and science behind them.

What's Happening in Beginning Mindstorms

This semester I'm teaching a Beginning Mindstorms class to middle school kids. All 12 happen to be boys even though it's open for girls to sign up. This class teaches the basic elements of move blocks, waiting, loops, switches and all about the sensors. We have 12 weeks to give an intro course which I think is fine, however, I do think the class would run better had it been a two hour class instead of one. It seems like we're always in a rush to do things even as we are accomplished an enormous amount this semester. If it were a two hour class, the kids would have time time build and program their stuff. As it goes now, I assign programs for homework so they bring it into class to test. It's been working fine, but I'm sure we could do more with a longer period in class.

Girls and LEGO

On a recent post to a group about LEGO that I like to read called LEGO Engineering, there was discussion about why girls aren't as attracted to LEGO classes or even LEGO bricks in general. The company tried making an effort to appeal to girls by creating a princess line of DUPLOS and LEGO brickss. Hmmm...just because something's pink, will that attract little girls?? My own little girl thought it was very attractive at first. We got one of the "pink" sets. She built it, but then lost interest. There wasn't a whole lot she wanted to do with the set after having it built.

Anyways, when I posed the question about girls, I got lots of great, but diverse answers that I'll try to summarize here. It's just been on my mind since I'm currently teaching an all boy class.

My question was:
"Would it be better for girls if I created an all girl MIndstorms NXT class? Does it matter? How do you create a different type of Mindstorms class that would appeal more to girls?"


Answers (that are all opinions from others experiences):

1. Incorporate projects that are more creative such as making music, theme park rides, dancing robots. Don't focus too much on speed and strength competitions. Have an end of the unit exhibition rather than a tournament.
2. Don't do anything different. Just separating them from the boys may be enough to build their confidence in building. The "appeal" of the class might simply be that there are no boys in it. Girls can be just as competitive as boys.
3. Boys are happy to do robotics w/o any context at all. Making your robot go is enough for them. Girls are more engaged if there is a reason such as build a robot to do something useful or helpful to someone else.
4. Have strong female role models.
5. Don't create a separate class for girls. The ones who really want to be involved with LEGO will be there no matter what the ratio or the topic.

So thoughts are all over the board. I think the great thing is that we are so diverse in our thinking and personalities that there really is no right answer to this question. I might go down the list and try them all!

P.S. My daughter recently discovered the LEGO Creator Building sets where you can build three different types of houses. She enjoys those and is able to adapt the sets and play more creatively with those.

The LEGO Fort

What do you get when you slap some 2 x 4's together, a board, 6 gray plates and lots of yard sale LEGO bricks? You get a fort of course! There is no limit to the imagination when you have a tub of LEGO bricks to work with. The kids built this fort complete with kitchen, workout room, bathroom, and much,much more. Then they used their minifigures and created characters (usually - good guys and bad guys) and made a storyline for what was happening in this fort. We are quite fortunate to have the space to allow them the freedom to keep this up and an ongoing play space.

Here's a close up of the kitchen and theater room.

Here's the jail and bad guy hang out.