As I've mentioned before, Ryan and I have assisted in coaching the rookie FLL team "System Update" this year, and they recently competed in a qualifier tournament. Though they sadly didn't go on to the state competition, we nonetheless noticed a great improvement of their knowledge and dedication to robotics and are quite proud of what they managed to do. Not to mention that we made friendships with people we otherwise probably wouldn't have interacted with and had a jolly good time in our teaching.
When Ryan and I first began our quest, we were not at all confident of what would happen; these were sixth graders, after all, and most of them were boys. Bundles of energy with short attention spans, or so it seemed to us. Indeed, our first weeks were not promising: most of them knew little of robotics coming in, and getting them all to sit down and design their robot's prototype wasn't easy. However, as time progressed, we found that most enjoyed it and were getting more familiar with it. We also, naturally, developed strategists for dealing with their hyperactivity, namely dividing them into groups -- which, we found, worked pretty well, depending on who was in which group. We decided early on to strictly follow the KISS paradigm, another philosophy which turned out to benefit the team; though their robot was simply designed and had few attachments, the team's strength lay mainly in programming. I quite enjoyed showing the younger folk what I've learned about programming from FLL and FTC, and they put the information to good use by creating programs that were both incredible consistent (much more so than the ones I made what I was their age) and made maximum use of the the attachments by using them for multiple missions. I was amazed at their skill.
I addition to System Update's robotic successes, Ryan and I learned a great deal about patience and how to deal with kids, and, of course, we made friends with the team members as well. I have little doubt that we'll do it again next year.
-Frank
When Ryan and I first began our quest, we were not at all confident of what would happen; these were sixth graders, after all, and most of them were boys. Bundles of energy with short attention spans, or so it seemed to us. Indeed, our first weeks were not promising: most of them knew little of robotics coming in, and getting them all to sit down and design their robot's prototype wasn't easy. However, as time progressed, we found that most enjoyed it and were getting more familiar with it. We also, naturally, developed strategists for dealing with their hyperactivity, namely dividing them into groups -- which, we found, worked pretty well, depending on who was in which group. We decided early on to strictly follow the KISS paradigm, another philosophy which turned out to benefit the team; though their robot was simply designed and had few attachments, the team's strength lay mainly in programming. I quite enjoyed showing the younger folk what I've learned about programming from FLL and FTC, and they put the information to good use by creating programs that were both incredible consistent (much more so than the ones I made what I was their age) and made maximum use of the the attachments by using them for multiple missions. I was amazed at their skill.
I addition to System Update's robotic successes, Ryan and I learned a great deal about patience and how to deal with kids, and, of course, we made friends with the team members as well. I have little doubt that we'll do it again next year.
-Frank