Progress Check-in

On Wednesday and Thursday the first week of December, we're at a pivotal point. We're a month into meeting and have about a month left until the competition. It's the halfway mark.

As we continued working on the rocket launch mission where they have to hit the launcher and make the spaceship fly up a certain height, we were trying to find something heavy enough, and one of the kids suggested using the metal sphere that serves as a wheel on the back of the robot. You can use any Lego pieces, and that is from Lego, so it's legal. We're still trying to figure out how to make sure to hit it accurately every time, but with a heavier hammer, there's a better chance of it working.

I asked the kids to demonstrate at the end of one of the team meeting times all the missions and how close they were. They didn't have to work 100%, just sort of work, enough that we could see the idea that the robot would travel and make an action that seemed like it could accomplish the mission. Even if it missed or didn't hit hard enough or whatever, I just wanted them to be able to demonstrate where they were at, more for themselves, to help figure out how much more they have to go. At some point, we will need to connect all the missions, mostly including having the robot return to base where the arm can be swapped out and the robot aimed at the next mission.

The demonstration was okay. Half the missions they demonstrated were things they hadn't worked on in a couple weeks and while they were supposed to be practicing with them to be ready to demonstrate, some of them they hadn't even found the code or re-tested it once. The robot is a little different shape than it was previously with changing out the back wheel for the hammer, so what they programmed before didn't exactly work. I tried to make the point that this is what they were supposed to be preparing for.

We also talked today about the project. I had sort of maybe kind of known there was this other part to the competition but hadn't really looked at this part very hard, since we didn't actually do a competition last year. I remember looking at the challenge a year ago, but since we did a demonstration at the school and not an actual competition, the project didn't feature into what we were doing.

The short description of it is that they pick a problem related to the theme of the year - space, this year - and research a solution to the problem. They were sent home with a homework assignment to come back next week with an idea of a possible problem and solution pair that we could use. They do a presentation that takes under 5 minutes. It can be creative - doesn't have to be totally realistic or ultra-professional. They just have to show they are working together and creatively problem-solving. I think the project sounds kind of fun. One of the kids said, "that sounds boring." I explained that it will be boring if they make it boring or interesting if they make it interesting. So there we are. We'll see tomorrow what they come back with.