FIRST LEGO League Team Blast #3:

It’s been a busy couple of weeks; we hope that you are working through your Team Meeting Guide, trying out those Spark projects with your team and digging into the robot game!

In this email you’ll have info on:

• Training Opportunities
• Team Meeting Guide
• Crane Mission Guidance
• Tournament Registration

Training

Kickoff in Toronto

The Kickoff in Toronto on the weekend was great!  If you weren’t able to make it you can review the slidedecks here to see if there are any gems you can take away.

Registration now open for FLL Training and Networking Events in Toronto

To help you prepare for the 2019 FLL City Shaper season, coaches are invited to attend one of the following training and networking sessions at:

• Scarborough Village Public School (click here for map) on Tuesday, October 1 from 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
  • Registration link
• Western Technical Commercial School (click here for map) on Thursday, October 3 from 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
  • Registration link

Whether a new or returning coach, these sessions provide opportunities to ask questions, to learn about the robot design, innovation project and core values components of the FLL program,  to connect with other coaches, on whose expertise you can draw throughout the season, and explore strategies and resources to help ensure a successful and enjoyable season for both students and coaches. If you have any questions, please contact Annika Pint at annika.pint@firstroboticscanada.org and hope to see many of you there!

Team Meeting Guide

You should have received your Team Meeting Guide and Engineering Notebooks (x10) at this point.  If you have not, they will be arriving soon.  This is a new product that FIRST came up with this year and it is really GREAT!  We highly recommend you using this resource to its full capacity.  There are 12 lessons that take you through a guided process.  Each lesson is 90 minutes long but you can tailor this to your needs.  If you run two of these per week it will take you 6 weeks to complete and at that point you should have a basic project and a few missions completed on the table.  From there you can develop things further and deepen your understanding of the project and add more missions to your repertoire.  The side bar on each page are a set of tips that are referenced throughout the page with bracketed numbers.  Keep in mind that the Team Meeting Guide is a resource to help you; however, it’s not a requirement.  The Engineering Notebooks would be a great thing to bring to your tournament to show the judges or have at your pit because it provides them with talking points and a record of the process that your team has worked through during their season.  Again, not a requirement. 

Crane Mission Guidance 

To supplement the guided mission and in response to early feedback, FIRST HQ has created the Software and Robot Lessons and the Crane Mission Further Guidance documents.  The crane mission is a guided experience where they provide you with the code and the building instructions to accomplish that mission.  This is a “gimme” that everyone should be able to accomplish easily and feel success.  From there, it is up to you to decide what other missions you want to tackle.  Have fun and encourage their creativity and problem-solving skills!

More details to come in next week’s Team Blast.

Tournament Registration

FIRST in Ontario does not use the Dashboard for Qualifying Tournament Registration.  We handle it internally in Ontario and we will be providing you with a link to register for your event soon.  When you get that email you will be asked to select three events from your division (either East or West, dividing line being Hwy 247 on the West side of Toronto) and we will allocate you to one of those three choices as best we can.  In some circumstances (ie. too many of the same teams all pick the same events) we may have to come back to you to ask about a fourth option.  More details will be coming in that specific email about Tournament Registration.  The timeline for tournament registration is as follows:

October 4: Tournament Registration Opens

October 18: Tournament Registration Closes

October 25: Teams find out where they are competing

November 1+: Tournament Organizers begin emailing tournament-related information to teams