2014-15 Hayhurst Neighborhood School Lego Robotics TeamTeam Calendar
|
We are The Minesteins!
E=MCSquared Henry, Max, Emma, Josiah, Casey, Kimberly, Sammi, Felix |
The Minesteins rocked the house at the FLL qualifying tournament!
They won two trophies: 1st Place for their research project and
the ACE Award (given to teams who perform well in all four categories and in the top 50% on robot performance).
The team is going to state!!!
A million thanks to all the people who have supported us! A very special thanks to Joel Levin and Toni Paavola!
They won two trophies: 1st Place for their research project and
the ACE Award (given to teams who perform well in all four categories and in the top 50% on robot performance).
The team is going to state!!!
A million thanks to all the people who have supported us! A very special thanks to Joel Levin and Toni Paavola!
Week 13: 12/3/14
Is this really the last week? We still have so much to do! The team did a great job of pulling all the loose ends together. They learned all their lines, they tested their Writing Craft: The PDX Version on 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students and they presented their project presentation to their classrooms and to their parents. The robot is behaving well, the t-shirts arrived and the bobbles are ready to be handed out. It's time to show the world what we can do! |
|
Prepare to be amazed!
Week 12: 11/25/14
|
What a fun week! We finished our game...well, mostly. We had a small group of 5th grade students test it. They begged us to let them come back and play it again. They want us to add more buildings and more doors. They also made suggestions on what materials they'd like to see us include. We finalized the script for our research project and are beginning to memorize our lines. Next week we will perform our skit for teachers and classrooms. We wish we had one more week. The kids have been totally rocking the competition board. They have absolutely come together as a team! I'm so proud of all they have accomplished. |
Week 11: 11/18/14
We had a fun week. We began with videoconferencing with Joel Levin, creator of MinecraftEDU. He generously spent time with us and answered a bunch of our questions. What a nice man. We did one more crafting session on Wednesday and almost got the world finished. We are sooo close- it's killing us! We also fine tuned our programs and worked on running the board. Our robot is actually behaving almost all of the time. We have done more pushups than usual these days. We should be both stronger and more focused by tournament day! We read through a rough draft of the script and saw the lab coats that Henry's dad can get for us. They are awesome. We think we need pocket protectors, too. The t-shirt design is finalized and the order has been submitted. We'd like to finish the world and have a handful of students test it this week. We are working very hard! We can't believe we only have four practices left.
|
|
Here is the world we are creating for our research project. Do you recognize the bridges and buildings?
Week 10: 11/12/14
|
What a wild week! We had some successes and some disappointments but overall, we had a productive week. We were frustrated that some programs that previously worked aren't now. Of course, it's all going to get worse because we have to start using just one robot. How much time did we say we have left? Geesh!
We did another crafting session Friday night and almost have our world completed. The bridges and building are done and we're adding paths and border blocks. The kids hate the border blocks because they can't go past them. I think they are genius! Hayhurst and the playground are almost done, too. We've even figured out how to teleport- so now we just need the time to finish it. Time? Lisa brought in a sample of the t-shirt. It's an awesome design! We also talked about hats. We decided that white ones would work best if we want to add Einstein hair. Henry said his Dad might be able to get lab coats for us for the skit. Now we just need a skit- ha ha! We are looking forward to chatting with Joel Levin this week. He's one of the creators of MinecraftEDU. We've emailed both he and Toni Paavola (MinecraftEDU coder) and are eager to hear back from them. |
Week 9: 11/5/14
Wow- how fun was this week! We made a ton of progress on our programs, we started creating jigs to keep our start points consistent and we began adding notes to our programs. All of our programs are becoming more dependable and our robots more accurate. If we can pull it all together, we have the potential to get 180 points. That's a lot of points! I think the best part of the week, though, was our crafting session on Friday night. Doing MinecraftEDU with the team was way more fun than I'd anticipated. What a hoot. We are almost finished building the bridges which begin at the Fremont Bridge and end at the Marquam Bridge. We also placed Big Pink, OMSI, the Skidmore Fountain, the arch at the entry to Chinatown, the Convention Center and Voodoo Donuts. What a crazy fun night- so fun in fact, that the kids have asked if we can do it every Friday night- ha ha! |
|
Week 8 Practice Time
Week 8: 10/31/14
|
We had our best week ever! By the end of Thursday's practice we had all four robots doing what we wanted them to and all eight kids were feeling pretty dang good. So was their coach! Most of the kids created t-shirt designs which they shared with the group. We've handed them over to the T-shirt designer and are eager to see what she comes up with. We voted for purple shirts. We had our first MinecraftEDU session. I thought the kids were going to explode when I made them brainstorm before I let them launch the program. It's no understatement when I say that it was absolute chaos at the onset. In time, the kids settled down and the adults figured out how to direct the kids and by the end of the session, we had the Willamette River and 4 1/2 bridges built! Now we need to determine how we will integrate the writing piece. We are hoping to speak with more experts this week. |
Week 7: 10/24/14We had a good week. We interviewed all of the 1st-5th grade teachers and shared our research with the team. We discovered that many of the teachers felt writing was a challenge for students. Therefore, we decided to focus our research on using MinecraftEDU to teaching writing. We are currently trying to decide what world or worlds we'd like to build for the kids to explore. We are sharing a Google document to brainstorm ideas for the world. Next week we will begin building the world.
We are beginning to conquer a few missions. We had a few glitches with the green loop but it appears to be working again. Our robot is beginning to take shape. It now has two arms, two color sensors and a touch sensor. We are learning that it is difficult to design a robot that works for all of our missions. We are all having to compromise just a little. Programming the EV3s is a bit challenging, too. Our robots don't always do what we want but we know they always do what we tell them to do. Little by little, we are all learning to be better programmers, better engineers and better team players. We brainstormed ideas and now officially have a team name. We are E=MCC (MC squared). Go team! Now we can think about t-shirts and designs. All of us will be drawing designs to share with the team on Wednesday. We cannot believe that we only have 6 weeks left! |
|
|
Week 6: 10/15/14
We had a productive week. We pulled apart and rebuilt our team robots. We now have four matching robots to practice with. We reviewed the missions and decided to begin with the missions that are closest to base and relatively easy to program. As we began to program, we realized we needed to add attachments: motors, arms and sensors. We learned that we will all need to agree on where we add attachments because we only get to use one robot in the competition. The good news is that by the end of practice we had two missions working! So far we have 15 points!
Mrs. Newlyn, Sammi and Max's mom and principal at Forest Heights, came to talk with us about our research project. She said that she feels that one of the most difficult things for kids to learn is to write. She also mentioned that the PPS Superintendent, Carol Smith, has a goal to get all PPS students reading by the time they reach 3rd grade. We still haven't decided what to focus on in our Minecraft project but we have lots of ideas. |
Week 5: 10/8/14
We had a great practice today. We finally decided on a team robot. We spent a lot of time making our structures more solid and testing our different wheels. We ran all of the robots several times and discussed the weaknesses and strengths of each one. It was a tough decision but in the end, Robot#1 was the clear winner.
Next we focused on making sure that we knew how to access our Google Apps accounts and how to locate the shared document we'll be using. We began using the document right away, adding our ideas for the research project. We are excited that we can begin sharing our information. We are eager to come up with an amazing idea so that we can convince Fran to get Minecraft EDU for our school! Next week we will begin programming! We can't wait! |
|
|
Week Four: 10/1/14
We had a productive week! We have four excellent robot designs to choose from. All four designs meet our criteria of a small profile and a simple design. All have places for sensors and additional motors. We tried to chose just one for our team but decided we needed just a little more time to make that decision. We will do that on Wednesday.
We had a great research session. We brainstormed a little more about how to make learning more fun. The kids kept talking about how they wish they could use Minecraft at school.....why couldn't they? They were both shocked and elated when we agreed that they could! So, their research project is going to answer the question: "How can we use Minecraft as a teaching tool in school?" They had a myriad of ideas and could hardly wait for each other to finish talking so that they could chime in. They couldn't believe we actually said okay to Minecraft! They were thrilled that the adults might want to learn how to play and they were excited about being able to teach us. They talked about servers and realms and used all kinds of other terminology that everybody will need to learn. I have a feeling that all of us will learn so much more than we had expected. I don't think I've ever seen a group this excited about a project. |
Week Three: 9/24/14
This week was about making sure we understood the missions and getting a start on robot design. At Wednesday's practice, everyone selected at least one mission to become an expert on. Each team member shared their expertise about the mission with the rest of the team. Then we studied the board and decided on a few basic robot design elements. The team decided that the robot should have a relatively small profile so that it could fit through the mat pieces on the board and that it should be simple in design. We decided not to worry about arms/attachments or sensors at this point but rather to design good stable bases for the EV3 brick. The engineer pairs worked remarkably well together. We had a few clashing egos but everyone worked through their issues with grace. It was impressive to see how well they worked together. The kids surprised us with their thoughtful designs. Next week we'll attach a few wires and run some simple programs on each of the robots to test them out. It won't be long before we will be deciding on a team robot. We made great progress this week!
|
|
|
Week Two: 9/17/14We started the week talking about what it means to be a team. We all added to the list of qualities that we feel are needed to have a strong team. Then we worked with our new partners building the mat pieces. On Friday we began talking about the research project. Chick came to snack time to get us thinking about the different ways people learn. We need to start doing some research! Then we headed back to practice, finished the mat pieces and watched the mission videos. Each of us became an expert on two missions. We ran out of time to share our expertise on the missions but we will do that at the start of Wednesday's practice. We looked at the competition board and talked about which missions might be fun to do. There's so much to think about when considering what missions to chose for the competition!
Our team is already coming together as a group. We enjoy each other's company and we have fun working together. So far, no one is too bossy or not involved enough. Everyone is participating and everyone is doing their job. It's going to be a great season! |
Week One: 9/10/14At last the Hayhurst Lego Robotics season has begun! We spent the first week talking about our commitment to the team, about the Core Values and about how much fun we were going to have. We learned that we will have jobs at the start of practice and at the end of practice. We also learned that we will work with new partners almost every day. We like having our own water bottles! We started building the mat pieces with our partners. We ended the day with our exit pass: "I enjoyed working with my partner today because....".
|
|