Team Random at college…

Okay, so we’re not really in college, but we’re attending a manufacturing camp at Trident Technical college. We showed our videos, our programs, and put some basic information out there.
(Vivek and I attended this camp last year, it’s has about 24 kids learning about engineering, which includes FLL)
It was pretty cool, and we got a chance to correct some of the errors/malfunctions that we’ve been trying to get rid of. I realized just how different our team was. I mean, we’re FLL, we’re middle school (well, now high school students), and we like engineering. But there’s only four of us. We think of ourselves not as the defined roles that some people assign to ourselves, we like to do a lot of things. We’re all still friends. I’ve seen how some teams interact, they’re aquaintences, or colleagues. But we’re friends. I saw everyone on the team for the first time since school got out, and they probably still have bruises from the ginormous hugs I gave them.

Emily in New York City!

Its me. Emily. I just got back from a trip to New York for the Scholastic Artists and Writers Alliance National Awards-a group that recognizes student writers and artists on a national and regional level. it’s sponsored by the same company that puts out all of the book fairs and stuff. I won two gold awards for writing poetry. By the way, I love New York city. I mean, it is really really fun! I’ll post pictures in the near future.

Wonderful Surprise

One and a half months ago, Team Random had the opportunity to demonstrate their robot and other presentations in front of their school, including several teachers, four classes, a vice principal, and a guidance counselor. People were really supportive, and mostly interested in the robot. We had a lot of pins and pens left from competition (because we really hoped we were going to the worlds, we over ordered) and so we gave a lot of them away at school.
(I can’t tell you the number of times that I have stopped someone and said, ‘I think that’s my pen,’ only to realize that I gave it to them).
My family and I were driving to New York for an awards ceremony when we passed through the same battlefield our class passed through two weeks ago on a Washington DC field trip. Inside was a log of visitors who came to the battlefield. The pen to log in was a team random pen. Someone left it there, a little surprise present. Its a small world, and stuff comes back to you.
-Emily

FIRST Worlds

Eight members of Team RANDOM and it’s collective family went to the FIRST Worlds in Atlanta, GA, this week (Heirs, Ben, Anna, Ms. Judy, Ms. Vicki, Ms. Kidder, Mr. Kidder, and I [Emily]).
I can tell you this: It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. Set in the Georgia Dome and World Congress Center and the surrounding areas (Centennial Park, etc) it was huge.
It wasn’t just the FLL World competition, but FTC, FRC (the highschool levels of FIRST), FLL (What team random participates in every year), and Jr. FLL (I don’t know the difference between FLL and the Junior devison, other than that JR. FLL is for kids 6-9 and FLL is 9-14). In FLL alone, I believe that there were 32 countries represented and about 90 teams. Some countries, like the US, Spain, and Canada, sent more than one team.
It was a mixing bowl of cultures, Brazil, Spain, South Africa, France, UK, New Zealand, Korea, China, Australia, Egypt, Israel, and more. Of those countries, some spoke English and some didn’t.
If I didn’t love FIRST before, I’m obsessive about it now. I want to mentor teams, help them, be a part of this in any way I can. Really, I’m starting to think it’s one of the best things anybody can do, for fun, to learn, to meet other people and learn other cultures. It’s not just science, it’s science, math, sportsmanship. It’s kind of out there. But it is the most amazing thing–Ever.

Team Random Takes 2nd Place at State Championship

Emily, Hiers, Vivek and Ben went all out today. Out of 79 teams, they won the silver medal (it was actually a big yellow and black Lego statue). They also took 3rd in the Research portion of the competition.

The toughest part of the competition was the robot itself. This was somewhat surprising since the team has been consistently scoring 370+ in practice. They’ve had several 400 (out of a possible 400) point runs. It wasn’t to be today. Their top robot run was a 320, this was the 8th best score, but not up to their typical standards. Still, they pulled together as team, remembered to smile, work hard and have some fun.

Are you excited!?

If not, you should be! Team RANDOM left for STATE COMPETITION this afternoon. How cool is that? It order to get to Clemson on time, our parents had to pull us from school early (around lunch) so we could get here in time to be well rested for tomorrow.
We will do our best to update, I heard something about a twitter feed, but I don’t know much about it. We will try, I can promise you that.

Brochures…

I was right, we now can add brochures to our long list of stuff we’re bringing to competition. Emily was working on one on Thurs., but before she would ever save it, Microsoft Word would crash. Sorry Emily! But she got that fixed, so we have our brochures.

Buttons!

More warm fuzzies for all you readers…We finally got our buttons yesterday. Mrs. Vicki brought them to the meeting (we have been meeting officially and unofficially about every other day for the past two weeks to prep for state) yesterday, and they are so cool. Kudos to Mr. Reggie for designing them (bright green with our logo), Show Offs for making them (they are really nice buttons), and everyone who helped in the process (including the team mates for picking them, specifically the members who were more vocal in picking the design).
Now we have pens, buttons, a back board, and I hear rumors of a brochure or two…

Team Random reaches 400!

Sorry we didn’t post earlier, we were/are wrapped up in getting ready for State!
However, we did want to inform you that last weekend, Hiers and Emily were practicing with the bot, and, twice, timed, we reached a score of 400! (out of, well, 400) Perfect score! We were so excited, and Mrs. Vicki was so irritated that we didn’t get it on camera. Just wanted to let y’all know.

Research Presentation Practice

We’ve been practicing the presentation for our research project until we’re all sick of it. We all know our parts and we’re starting to sound like we’re speaking naturally. We’re looking forward to doing it for real. Whew!