Look Who's Coming to Town

We got this postcard in the mail a couple weeks ago. As the kids oohhhhed and ahhheed over it, I had to tell them we couldn't go because we already had plans for that weekend. This Expo goes to select cities every year so maybe we can catch it another time.

Looks like fun. I'm not sure what the target age group is, but who doesn't love LEGOs? Also, what's interesting is they don't allow you to just show up anytime. You have to buy tickets for a pre-determined time slot of about 3-4 hours. It kind of reminds me of buying tickets to watch a play.

Here's the link to their site in case you are interested: www.legokidsfest.com.

Announcing 2012 Summer Camps

The schedule's all set for this summer's camps. I'll be holding 4 sessions of LEGO Engineering and 2 sessions of Mindstorms Robotics. Check out the home page of YBB to see the listing of schedules and locations.

Pulling together all the details can be daunting, but I like the challenge. Really the toughest part of the camps was finding a good location. This year I'm really happy with the new spots for our camps: Written World Bookstore and Springs Rhythm Studio and Event Center.

Both locations have an open floor plan, available parking, hard floors and best of all... easily accessible bathrooms! Kids have direct access to bathrooms so that I don't have to have them go in pairs anymore like I did at the Y. I feel much better about the layout of the rooms. Kids don't have to wander around to get to a restroom. Whew!

Also, I wanted to reach more people this year by finding locations in a southern and northern part of Colorado Springs. Granted, they aren't really that far apart, but anything helps. Actually Colorado Springs isn't that spread out of a place either. I had one request for the Broadmoor area too. Anyone interested in holding a camp there? If so, please let me know. I have a possible location, but can't justify doing it if there's no interest.

In case you are curious, if you took the LEGO Eng camps last summer or winter, this is the same camp. You are welcome to come back, but it will be a repeat of what you've already done.

Summer Camps are in the WORKS

I'm trying to secure locations for this summer's 2012 LEGO camps. I will continue to offer LEGO Engineering and Mindstorms Robotics. Depending on how much energy I have during the summer, I may look into the pneumatics add on for LEGO Engineering. Be on the lookout in the next few weeks for the new camps announcement. If you want, sign up for my email list to get the registration information when I've secured the dates/locations.

LEGOs for Learning in School

I know, yes there are computers and iPads and other fancy gadgets that are tasked to help kids learn in school. They are valuable tools, but how cool would it have been to be able to program little robots and build LEGO sets with math and science principles in mind? Well the people at LEGO have done a masterful job of helping teachers incorporate these childhood toys into mainstream education.

I recently came across an article, 20 Amazing Examples of LEGOS in the Classroom that listed how teachers from elementary schools through colleges are using LEGOs in their classrooms to facilitate learning and problem solving. It's a pretty good list of the applications out there. There are hundreds more teachers who also use LEGOs, but didn't make the list. There's a growing community of educators who have access to LEGO books, software, user groups, conferences and much more. We're learning from each other what are best practices from a worldwide network of teachers using LEGOs.

Winter Camp Success!

Just on a whim, I decided that I might try to run a winter camp this year. I was hopeful that there might be interest, but I prepared myself to be ready in case kids would rather rest during their Christmas break or were traveling instead. Registrations were a little slow at first. I wasn't even sure if I would run the afternoon camp since there were only 2 kids registered up until the week before. Suddenly, I got so many registrations that my morning camp filled up and had a 4 person wait list. Then my afternoon camp had a few more registrations and had 6 kids participating.

It was quite interesting moving things back and forth from the YMCA to my van. It was actually a lot of work. What made it worse was that there was a significant snow storm on Thursday. It didn't break any records, but the city was on accident alert AND I'm pretty sure they would have canceled school had it been a regular school day. HOWEVER, nothing would stop those kids from coming to LEGO CAMP!! They were so excited the whole week that it would have taken more than a few icy roads to keep them from attending. I commend those precious parents and grandparents who were willing to tackle the weather. People came that day from as far as Security. The only student who didn't make it was someone from Castle Rock. I totally get that decision!

Here's some photos from a wonderful week.

In the afternoon class, we spend a lot of time on the floor.

Two sumobots in a battle to the end.

Wonderful Time as State!

All 62 teams crowded into this pit area. Our team is in the front center with the rainbow feather hats.

We went to state last Saturday. It was a great time of meeting with 62 other teams all over Colorado. We were jammed packed into the pit area, but the kids didn't mind. It gave them easier access to network and meet new people.

Our robot didn't perform as well at State because we were having battery issues. For some unknown reason, the two NXT recharageable batteries I bought ran out of juice even before the end of the 2.5 minute robot run. When you have a bad battery, it also affects how the robot performs. I may be switching to good ole alkaline for next year. At least that way I can count on the backups. I was so proud that none of the boys got really stressed out about it. They were disappointed, but no one "lost" it. However, they got to see Gracious Professionalism in action when one other team was kind enough to loan us their WORKING NXT recharagable backup battery. Wow! We were quite blessed and our robot worked fine again for the last two out of five rounds. I sent both batteries back for Lego Education to check out.

The boys did improve on their project presentation. It worked out so much better after we brought in a very experienced public speaker and debater who also happened to be a sister to one of the kids. She went through every single kid and pointed out what they could do to improve. It helped tremendously and the boys did better than at regionals.

So we all came away happy that it was a positive experience. Everyone who participates in state gets a medal, but only the really exceptional teams win further trophies. And only one team goes to the World Festival.

As for me, I'm glad to have a break until we start thinking of Senior Solutions!

Robot Performance 1st Place

Wow! After a very long day that lasted 10 hours our Mindstorms Maniacs came away with the #1 Robot Performance Award. This award is based on the points your robot scores on the table runs. We had 3 chances to practice in the morning and 3 real runs in the afternoon. Our afternoon scores were 122, 155 and 153. That may not seem a lot out of the total possible 452, but this year's challenges didn't assign a very high point value for any one activity. I don't know how much higher we are compared to the other 45 groups we competed against. I'll wait for the final results on the Southern Colorado Qualifier site.

Yes, this is within regulation height!

The kids really had a good time and enjoyed showing off their robot. One of our attachments barely came under the 16 inches when attached to the robot so it was humungous! Kids got a kick out of seeing what it was capable of accomplishing.

Also during competition we found so much variation in the tables that it wasn't easy getting as high of a score as we did during our practices. The team knew it was pretty pointless to try any major re-programming of our robot during the day. They mostly practiced their hand offs and pulling off and putting on attachments.

The day went smoothly and the kids had a great time having to interact with other teams during the alliance rounds. Alliance rounds are when 2-3 teams pick their best missions that run consistently and try to combine to get the highest score during the 2.5 minutes. This really got our kids out of their shell in having to interact and really take a look at other people's robot build and strategy for solving the problem.

The crowd of parents and supporters.

The folks who organized this year's tournament did not disappoint. UCCS is a great facility to have this tournament in. Nothing was too far away and parking was free! Thanks to all the volunteers who put on this valuable event for our kids. They learned how to talk to judges on a very professional level explaining their projects and robot designs. They had to problem solve as a team on the spot and mostly they learned how to respond to high pressure situations with a lot of grace for one another and for other teams.

Our fearless MC.

We also qualified for the Colorado State Championships for the first time this year. It's free and open to the public, but you do have to pay for parking. It's on December 10th at DU. Come cheer us on if you are in the neighborhood. Here we go again!

It's Not About the Robots!

Here's a wonderful quote from Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST, "It’s not about the robots. Robots are just a vehicle. What you are building is way bigger. It’s about self-confidence. It’s about relationships. It’s about making sure the future is better than the past."

After attending our first and only scrimmage of the season, sharing with hundreds of people about our project and robot and working through team issues, I'm so reminded of Dean Kamen's thoughts from above. It rings true that the FLL season is filled with opportunities for growth for both the kids and the coach. Take a bunch of boys who love, love, love LEGOs, put them in a room where they have to decide the best way of programming a robot or presenting a solution and you'll get a bunch of different ideas. We had to work through relational issues, technical issues, time issues, teamwork issues, who's in charge issues, who get's their way issues, who gets the robot to work with issues... the list goes on and on.

But in the end we showed up as a team last Saturday for our scrimmage and had a wonderful time. FLL has set up a problem/challenge that is great training in maturing these kids into real world problem solvers that can operate in both the technical and the relational realms.

Here's where I got the Kamen quote from above.

Russell Middle School Scrimmage Champs!

Definition SCRIMMAGE - A practice session or informal game.

Yesterday we competed at a local middle school against 15 other FLL teams and we actually won! I was losing hope of winning anything since we didn't get anything for the project  or robot design. I thought we were pretty strong in those areas. It turned out in the end we wound up with the plaque for the overall Scrimmage Champions. It doesn't advance us to anything at the state level or do anything really special since this was just a practice session, but we were proud to get the award.

It's only about half way through the season and no team is really ready to compete, but  we learned so much of what we needed to do from all the wonderful volunteer judges who shared with us honestly what we did well and what we could improve upon. We can only get better from here.

I LOVE what FLL teaches the kids. It's not really about the robots. The scrimmage helped the kids learn about working under pressure. They had to interact with adults who had very pointed questions about their research, teamwork and robot building design and held them accountable. Best of all, they got a chance to experience failure & disappointment and how to pick themselves up from that and continue the competition. I was so proud to be part of a team of kids who encouraged one another. One kid was really discouraged about one of the robot runs and another sat down with him and encouraged him about the whole situation. Our team definitely came together as a unit yesterday and so now I hope they will take these lessons learned and grow from it. It's not about Championships or robots or LEGOs. I'll speak to that in my next post.

We share our experiences with others

We went to Cool Science on Saturday and it was a day of non-stop talking for our kids. They interacted with hundreds of people young and old. It was such a neat event to get share with the public both the research and the robot game with the folks who came by. Kudos to the organizers who made our lives so much easier by providing wonderful volunteers and food & water.

I was so proud of all the boys who participated. For some, it was a stretch to talk to so many different people in one two hour time slot, but I absolutely think it's a terrific skill to acquire. Everybody was so nice to the boys and were genuinely interested in the MIndstorms and all they had to say about food safety.

My favorite moment of the day was when this 6 year old boy saw the robot retrieving the fish back into base. His jaw dropped wide open when he saw that. I missed catching the picture, but I did get a photo of the boy with his mom as he stayed to continue watching the robot retrieve fish.