Science Projects

I added two projects done by the kids.

The Newton's Law of Cooling Down Project was done 1 year ago using Robolab and RCX to investigate the rate of cooling and looking into better coffee cups to keep the temperature.

Another project is about using Robolab and NXT to look into ways to optimize following the dark line with different wheels, axle lengths and other factors.

Sylvan Nanites took 3rd place in Young Team Award

The Sylvan Nanites won a well deserved 3rd place in the Oregon State Young Team Award among a total of 54 Young and Old teams on Sunday Jan 20.

Good job!

The following is the press about the Oregon State Championship:

http://www.ous.edu/news_and_information/news/012308.php

Why is FIRST Lego League one of my favorites?

The answer is actually very simple.

I like to play with colorful plastic pieces. I like to figure out mechanical problems. I like to program and get the robot to do the work.

More importantly, I like to work on a research topic that can have a positive impact on the world, e.g. Ocean Odyssey (2005) - http://www.firstlegoleague.org/nobanner.aspx?pid=17940, Nano Quest (2006) - http://www.firstlegoleague.org/nobanner.aspx?pid=21380, and Power Puzzle (2007) - http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=60

And most importantly, I can work with kids that are very enthusiastic about doing something great for the world.

Which one should I use? RCX vs NXT?

Many people have written about this subject. I think it really depends on your experience. If you have kids on your team that know a little about Robolab programming, RCX is still a very good choice. Otherwise, NXT should be used.

I have built several robots using RCX and NXT doing similar missions. The NXT robot is always a little bigger. The wires are harder to hide.

I have also used both Robolab and NXT-G programming. Robolab 2.9.4 is pretty good. One complaint I have about Robolab is the need to use container numbers. They are gone now as we can use simple variable names and formulae. In fact, formulae is better handled b Robolab programs than in NXT-G. For people new to programming, NXT-G is easier to use. For people who have been programming with Robolab, 2.9.4 does offer a lot of nice surprises.

Which technical document is most useful for FLL?

There are many good materials for FLL. They can help you and your team to improve in robot design. Among them, I found the document "Building LEGO Robots For FIRST LEGO League" from High Tech kids most useful.

http://www.hightechkids.org/?1-3-20-blrforfllversion1.3.pdf

It is well worth reading that document at least 3 times.

Coaching a team - Parents Involvement

Parents involvement has a direct impact on the success of the team.

First, the parents that provide the facility for team meetings and running missions have to deal with the mess the kids leave around on a regular basis. That is definitely not a small task if we want to keep the facility clean and tidy.

Second, all parents have to trust the coach to coach their kids professionally, covering both technical and behavioral issues. They have to adjust their busy schedules to send their kids and pick up their kids on time. They also have to provide the time and resources for the kids to learn from their experiments with robots and research for the science project.

Occassionally some parents will talk to the coach about waht they think should be done. I often encourage the parents to talk to their kids directly and let the kids bring up the suggestions. Let the kids evaluate if the suggestions are worth brought up in the first place. This would prepare them to make decisions for themselves for the team, and for their lives in the future.

The communication between the coach and the parents can be a huge overhead if the parents do not respond in a timely manner. I have not found a solution to this problem at all.

What exactly is coaching?

After working with the nanites for three years, I came to realize coaching is simply make the kids realize they can accomplish more than what they have done. Coaching is asking questions at the time the kids can receive them positively and act on them with their time and resource constraints. It is okay to set a high expectation but the kids should feel that it is reachable.

For example, we settled for 385 points for the state championship this year as the robot would not be capable for the max 400 points. Several kids feel that 385 points should be reachable. Once a realistic goal is agreed by the team members, we need to muster the resources we have through team work and allow the kids to step up to fill the needed roles, e.g. a team spokesperson that is familiar with the overall directions for the team, programmers that can backup each other, builders and testers that can put the robots on the tournament table. We need the kids to get the programs and robots to work reliably within the two and half minutes allocated. That is definitely not a small task in the next two weeks before the state championship.

In summary, coaching is simply setting a a reasonably callenging goal for the team and let the team react to it, acheive the goal, and feel good about fulfilling the potential for the team.

On Coaching

I would really like to write about my 3-year coaching experience working with these smart kids since they were 9 years old. But I don't know where to start.

Perhaps I can start with myself.

How did I get started?

I brought Ida to Intel Open House in April 2005. We visited a booth from ORTOP. Ida was fascinated by programming and getting a robot to move around. She said she would like to start a FLL team. In September of that year, Another parent and I approached the coach of the existing team from the same elementary school separately and we both decided to form a new team. Words got out and we quickly grew to 11 kids, all 4th graders at that time.

Managing a dozen of kids is no small task. We had lots of problems sharing computers, robots, ideas, and almost everything. We also noticed that some kids were less interested in doing real work while their parents wanted them to learn. This is a good lesson for us. We should not rely on the words from their parents about their interest and enthusiam in Lego Robotics.

To avoid having too many parents and too many kids, we asked each kid to write an essay about why they would like to join the team in 2006. We also got more parents involved and we formed 2 teams of about 6 kids each. The experienced kids stayed on the same team to become the Nanites while the new kids formed their own team so they were qualified for Rookies Award.

Each kid on the Nanites team has a robot and access to a portable computer for programming. That turns out to be a very good idea. We built multiple robots for competition and had a hot spare whenever we participated in a tournament.

The problems in 2006 were mostly related to resolving conflicts among kids, and among parents too. The most difficult thing is to figure out a role for each individual kid and parent so we could co-exist together. We learned a lot about team work and gracious professionalism.

Many kids would like to return to FLL again in 2007. I just could not take all of them. We encouraged a few parents to form their own team as their kids already learned a lot from being the Nanites in 2006. We took a couple of new kids from the other team hoping that new ideas as a result of diversification would help the team.

The 2007 season is not over yet. Stay tuned.