Holiday Build and Party

We had a great time Tuesday with a free build and some snacks. Thanks for sharing these great students! Have a restful and safe break!

Coach Locke.

Amazing Fun Holiday Build

Build an ancient design from LEGOs for a chariot that has a compass that ALWAYS points north with NO magnets whatsoever. Amazing mechanical wonder!

Scrimmage This Saturday!

Doing the Math

We have spent the last several meetings learning how to apply some basic math so that we can efficiently design our robot missions. The students are discovering how math helps them drive the robot a specific number of inches or turn a specific angle in degrees.

Please note that we will have a scrimmage during the second hour of our Saturday, December 11th meeting. The point of the scrimmage is to give the students a feel for what competition is like. At this point they may have one or two missions ready so please come for the 2nd hour and celebrate with your students this beginning progress.

I am also working on some collaboration with Blue Valley CAPS for some help on our research project. We are working on planning a meeting at CAPS before winter break. CAPS has graciously offered to pay for a bus from CAPS to BVMS such that students get to class on time. Stay tuned for more details...

Saturday Meeting and Cow Town Throw Down

Just a reminder that we will be meeting this coming Saturday from 9:30 till 11:30.

...and just fyi, this Saturday there is a demo High School FIRST competition at Cerner. It is free and open to the public so it is a neat chance for students to get a look at "the big guys". See this page for more details.

White House Science Fair

Check out this clip from the White House Science Fair where President Obama sees first hand how great students from FIRST FLL and FRC teams are:

Dean of Invention

Check out this new show with host and FIRST creator Dean Kamen as host! Starts tomorrow night at 9pm on Planet Green.

Thanks to Mrs. Cwach for cluing us in on this one!

3.14159265

Yesterday we discovered why pi matters to the real world of our robots. Earlier in the week we had some great discussion and research and each team reduced their project down to 3 possible final options.

I really want to thank all the parents that have been coming to the meetings. Considering the large group of students, I really feel we are progressing better than previous years (largely because of the parent participation).

Coach Locke

Saturday Meeting Reminder

Reminder that we will have our first Saturday meeting this coming Saturday (October 9th) from 9:30am to 11:30am at the school in room 701.

Last week the students worked together to build their starter robots.

Teamwork is hard for us all

This week we learned a little about how necessary teamwork is. I enjoyed watching the students start to come together as they were challenged to work together to turn the tarp over. I'm sure they would be glad to share with you why that was so hard.

We also got an introduction to the programming "language" that the students will use to program their robot.

The students will be excited to start building their robots this week!

Rules and Research

This week we worked on learning the rules of our robot challenge and started to explore the research project challenge. It was cool to see some of the creative ideas for solutions to medical problems that the students came up with. One student suggested swallowing a pill containing a little robot that finds the problem then does surgery from the inside. I have no doubt that such a device will be invented by this generation someday.

If the students get their homework and chores done, you can always review the rules and challenges with them. All the Challenge details can be found HERE.

Next week we will break into our 4 permanent competition teams. I appreciate the parent support thus far. After we break into teams, we may have enough parents such that we could "assign" a parent as a permanent assistant coach for each team. Let me know if you would be interested in taking on that role.

Thanks,
Coach Locke

Week 1

I have really enjoyed meeting the robotics students this week. We will have a large group this year with nearly 30 students. We are getting to know each others names but we have already made much progress on building the mission models.

We will have a display at Family Fun Night this Tuesday so stop by and check out the progress.

Season 4 Begins!

What an exciting group last night! We even had a student bring an NXT robot that deals playing cards for poker! He built it over the summer with his Dad.

Note that our first meeting is this coming Tuesday, September 7th at 6:30 am in room 701.

Don't forget that today around noon the challenge will be posted to the FLL site. Check it out this weekend!

BVMS Robotics Kickoff Meeting

Fun Body Foward Field Setup Kit Build Video

Robot Ballet

I'm starting to think about 2010/2011 BVMS robotics. Check out this cool link to get in the summer robotics mood!

Congratulations!

Congratulations to ALL the Blue Valley Middle School robotics students. I am so proud of all the team members from all the teams! This long season was filled with discovery, friendships, learning, and best of all - fun!

I will continue to post to this blog occasionally during the off season with interesting science stuff and robotics related events. At this point, I will remove 8th graders from the mail list but let me know if you want to stay on the list. For 6th and 7th grade students, let me know if you want to be removed.

I will be meeting with the school and others soon to discuss possible plans for a team next year. I will email current 6th and 7th graders with any updated information that I have.

Thanks for sharing these clever and curious students with me and I hope to see you soon.

Sincerely,
Coach Locke.

Parent Presentations Saturday

Please plan to attend this coming Saturday at 11am to see the research project presentations at the school. This will be the only opportunity for you to see these because presentations at the competition are not open to the public.

The students have really pulled together the last few meetings. I am very proud of the teamwork they have shown!

I want to go to Mars...

HERE is a fun way for students to think about it and learn about different outer space destinations.

Mentorship

We had more than a half dozen mentors from the Blue Valley CAPS FIRST FRC team yesterday. It was a great experience for all the students as they worked together to wrap up robot missions. Special thanks to the CAPS High School team!

Also see this news article about the BV High School Team. I hope that many of the BVMS students one day will participate in robotics at the High School level.

No School - No Bots

No school tomorrow so we'll see you all Saturday morning at 8:30 at Garmin.

If the student's get bored with all this time off they can checkout this story about the science behind snowflakes. Can you tell what is wrong with the snowflake pictured above?