Great intro video for FLL Smart Moves Research Project

I came across this video made by LEGO artist Sean Kenney on the nxtstep blog (thanks Martyn!) and think this will be a great introduction to my team's discussion on this year's FLL research project.



Teams are challenged to look at their community and discover how people, animals, information, and things travel. They need to research one main mode of transportation and investigate:

1. What kinds of problems keep people and things from getting where they are going safely?

2. What kind of problems keep people and things from moving efficiently, getting where they are going quickly and using the least amount of energy?

3. How could your team help solve one of those problems?

I am planning to use this video as a model research project and having the team role play as FLL judges. After showing the video I will ask some critical questions to get the team thinking about how they will approach their own project. Questions like:

1. What mode of transportation was researched?
2. What kinds of problems does it cause?
3. How does this mode of transportation effect our energy resources?
4. How is this video helping solve this problem?
5. If you were a judge and this was a team's presentation, what would you want to ask the team?

LEGO Robotics Camp... I mean Teacher Training

A week ago I was fortunate enough to have my school send me and our 2nd Robotics teacher to the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy NXT-G Teacher Training course. It's held over a week at the National Robotics Engineering Center in Pittsburgh, PA.

Pittsburgh is a sweet city and the place we stayed at lent us bikes for free and it's baseball season, so we also got to take in a Pirates game at the beautiful PNC park on the Allegheny River.

But back to LEGO robotics...

In the NXT-G teacher training they gave us pre-built tribots (not Tribot from the MINDSTORMS kit, but a simple tri-wheeled robot), and we began with programming, not building. We progressed through the software from move blocks, to sensor blocks, to loops and switches, and ending with logic and data collection. We also worked through troubleshooting scenarios where we looked at broken programs and brainstormed how to help students through fixing them by closely examining program flow.

We usually begin our season with a lot of LEGO building, and then address programming after a robot has been built. I also used to just teach move blocks and a few wait for sensor blocks. Even some FLL teams won competitions with only using move blocks in their programming. But after this course I feel I should have dug into the capabilities of NXT-G a long time ago. There are many problems with even basic programming that can be resolved if the students have a solid foundation in basic programming. My initial goal of the course was to learn the capabilities of the software better than the 8th graders in our program, but I have revised that goal to include restructuring the first few sessions of ou after school program to include foundational lessons in programming with NXT-G.

I am also considering starting all the kids off with starter bots in September and re-addressing programming first, then moving on to building. The theory behind this is to give the students a toolbox of programming blocks that they make and can pull from when they build their own robotic creations later. They will develop this toolbox through engaging challenges with the starter bot. For the FLL team these starter challenges can be related to the Smart Move missions. I feel that starting this way the students will make better choices when designing their robots and when addressing the big question, "What do I want my robot to do?"

I have a lot of homework to do this summer.

You can teach yourself what I learned from the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy through their NXT Video Trainer CD-Rom

They also have an online course as well.
Professional Development - Online Course

I highly recommend the course to both veteran and new LEGO MINDSTORMS teachers.

My LEGO Team is Famous!

My Robotics team was invited to the FLL World Festival this past April not to compete (our scores never get high enough), but to be LEGO Ambassadors and work at the LEGO Booth helping to demonstrate MINDSTORMS 2.0.

Luck was on our side and at the last minute we were asked to fill in for a team that could not make it to Atlanta. Our scores didn't count, but the kids still got the chance to participate in running their robots in the Georgia Dome!

One of my 4th graders wrote a very thorough article on the experience for our school newspaper and it also got published on MINDSTORMS.com this week!

Elijah's report from FIRST World Festival in Atlanta

Our Wizard of Oz Theory

Throughout this year's FLL Climate Connections season, my team kept finding links to the Wizard of Oz through the different missions and mission models. They ended up naming their robots "Dorothy," "Tinman," and "Toto" because if this.

We came up with a long list of WOZ connections and made a short video to share this weekend (March 6, 7, 8) at the New York City Mega Robotics Expo at the Jacob Javits Center. The regional finals for FLL, FIRST Robotics, and the FIRST Tech Challenge are taking place together in one huge venue. Wish us luck. Enjoy the video:


WOZ Connections:

• Wicked Witch rides the BIKE to Dorothy's HOUSE
• A tornado (STORM) brews in Kansas
• The STORM RAISES THE HOUSE
• The HOUSE lowers on the Wicked Witch of the East
• Dorothy travels over the RAINBOW to Oz
• She meets the Munchkins (MINI FIGS) in Munchkin Land
• Dorothy travels over the Yellow Brick Road (YELLOW GRID AREA)
• Dorothy (our robot) delivers the bike, computer, and insulation to the Emerald City (GREEN AREA)
• Click your heels three times (FIND AGREEMENT)
• The POLAR BEAR is Glenda the Good Witch

FLL Practice - Week Three

We only had one team practice this week (the advanced team) due to the Yom Kippur holiday.

We began with the team sitting around the practice mat and with the strategy group sharing their ideas of the mission order and for attachments. I assigned a student to scribe their ideas on a chart, and we also used this share time to reinforce group rules like attentive listening, turn taking, and respectful disagreements.

The strategy discussion got the team charged up for building! We split the team into 4 groups to build the robot base we discussed last week. Unfortunately the robot design the team decided on requires a flat base - so that means AA batteries and not the rechargeable ones - my budget just went up!

I grabbed the students who were interested in leading the research project to review the powerpoint that Mark Sharfshteyn shared at the Brooklyn FLL Kickoff You can find it here: http://nycnjfirst.org/nycfll_kickoff.html.

After getting the overview we looked into a website that maps out the effects of Climate Change in New York City (we googled "climate change NYC"). We learned some shocking effects of climate change in our area and decided we were most interested in researching the effect of flooding on our transit system. I think for next week we'll look into contacting someone from the MTA to come in and talk to us - or making a field trip to go see them. The students also brainstormed making a video because they felt they did not have enough physical space last year in the judging booth to make a great play. They also agreed that a video would be better for school assemblies and can be shared on You Tube.

I wonder if the beginner team will also want to look into the effects of flooding on our transit system? It would be great to have them all contribute to each other... but they also need to be in charge.

FLL Practice - Week Two

Week two we made a lot of progress.

We began with an alliteration name game to remind us of all our names, then broke off into four groups:

Group 1 - Finished building the models for the robot game
Group 2 - Began Robot Research - finding a good base and attachments for the robot (on http://www.nxtprograms.com and http://mindstorms.lego.com/nxtlog)
Group 3 - Learned how to program the light sensor and tested a starter robot to see if we could get it to follow the rainbow
Group 4 - Began strategizing the order of the missions



I floated between the building, robot research, and strategy teams, while our two high school mentors taught the programming group about the light sensor.

We ended the practice with a team meeting where everyone shared their findings. The only group that did not have time to share was the strategy team - but we will share their findings first thing next practice.

FIRST FLL Practice

I had my first team practice this week for all the students in our FLL program. We have 30 students participating this year over 2 days (15 students a day). Our students range in age from grade 3 to grade 7 with two High School mentors/assistant coaches. We purchased two field set up kits so we could display one as a real life model and the kids could build the second one.

We are having the advanced team (those with prior FLL team experience) meet on Wednesdays and the rookies meet on Thursdays. We had the same lesson plan for both groups this first session.

Here's how Session 1 went (duration 1 1/2 hours):

Arrival/Warm-up Activity
Build your name out of LEGO & share your name, what grade your in, and experience with LEGO, Robotics, and FLL.

This group is already showing teamwork by building their names as a crossword puzzle

Showed FLL video (to rookie team)
http://www.usfirst.org/VideoPlayer.aspx?video=FLL.flv

Shared & Discussed FLL Values
http://www.usfirst.org/community/fll/default.aspx

Climate Connections Theme Overview
Reviewed our 3 challenges as a team - what we have to accomplish this season:
1 - Robot Game
2 - Research Project (just stated what it is - we did not get into details - we will leave that for a later practice)
3 - Technical Presentation

Reviewed Missions on Field Set up Table
Our High School mentors took turns explaining each mission and took questions.

Both groups (rookie and advanced had lots of questions and ideas for strategies).

We used the scoring worksheet from TechBrick.com as a guide.

Sorting LEGO Bricks
We split the students up into 4 groups to sort the mission model LEGO bricks

Building Mission Models
We divided the students into pairs or triads to build the mission models, giving the advanced builders the more advanced projects. The advanced team completed about 3/4 of the mission models (minus 5 models - the interactive model, the ice core, the elevation house, the core drilling model, and the storm). Those groups that didn't finish left a post-it on the step they last completed as a marker for the next team to start from.

Clean up
This year with a motivated team clean up is a breeze. In years past I used to give prizes (like a pencil or some SMARTIES) for the best cleaners (everyone gets something).

Homework/Notes Home
I assigned everyone homework to come up with an idea for a team name (we create one each year to match the theme) and to visit the FLL website to learn more about the missions and research project). I also sent a note home with our practice schedule for the season, a parent contact from, and a call for parent volunteers.

Next week (Week 2)...
We will work on completing the mission models, then will split up the students into paired teams to watch and re-teach the mission videos, and begin research on robot design. We will use NXTLOG, NXTprograms.com, and Domabotics as resources to help us.

Week 3 ideas...
I just re-watched An Inconvenient Truth and will show chapters of it to introduce the research project.