As planned, we did 10 minute rotations on the rounds today. Not as planned, we ran into technical difficulties at the programming station. First the VEX IQ brain wouldn't connect to the computer. Then we had trouble logging into or switching between accounts at modkit.com. These troubles were further increased by the main computer we normally use having it's dock bar out of whack, occasional "new com port" messages we couldn't resolve without rebooting, and the error message from Google saying that Modkit is using a deprecated authentication method. All this combined caused us to loose ten minutes and loose a rotation.
At the end we talked about specialization. The team members have been more enthusiastic of the idea each meeting, but they are unwilling to give up a turn driving the robot at the events. I'm running out of ideas on how to give all five team members equal driving practice time in a 60 minute meeting and yet give the programming and robot design stations enough time to make some progress. I suggested they discuss the idea of specialization with each other at school the next day.
On the brighter side, the EBLS order for some additional stuff we've been looking forward has arrived! They purchased a full highrise field element set so we can do full practice with the setup as it is at competitions. They also added sensors to the first ("A") kit so that it has the same as the second ("1") kit, four motors to bring each team up to six total, extra axels the "1" team requested for their design, a color sensor (maybe the "1" team had ordered that a while ago), an engineering notebook for the "A" team, individual graph paper composition design notebooks for each team member and spares of a few components.
Thank you very much to our host/sponsor Edith Bowen Laboratory School.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
The Unknown does rounds
At today's meeting with the Monday/Wednesday team I got some good news. They had all agreed on a team name, they are The Unknown. I don't know what they mean by it, but they like it better than all of the other suggestions they've made. We also talked about ideas for an engineering notebook and as I suspected they were all pretty set on having a VEX Robotics Engineering Notebook just like the other team. It was worth making sure. I'll order one so it will hopefully arrive by their next meeting in a couple of weeks.
Since everyone had felt strongly about not specializing, about everyone having a chance to do everything, I outlined a rotation schedule where two people would work on robot design, two on programming, and one on driving practice. I space out those who were comfortable with programming so that they would be working with others when it was their turn at the programming station. I also gave a brief overview of the Modkit (MIT Scratch-like) programming language. Almost half of our meeting was gone by that time so we only had time for five minute rotations.
The system worked out well as far as staying on task and not getting bored. Drivers stayed on task for the full five minutes and would have kept driving for longer if they were allowed to. The design group, without a robot to Do and Test on flew through a couple sketches each in their 10 minutes at the design station and needed the most attention to keep their focus. Perhaps if they had built partial components they could handle a longer time.
At the programming station people barely got their feet wet, it wasn't enough time to build something functional and the robot was busy driving so they wouldn't have been able to download to it anyway. They hardly touched their worksheet for the think stage. They could easily use more time and now that they all have had a taste of it, we will use both computers at that station next time.
We did a brief review of how things went and they were all enthusiastic about feeling like they had gotten a lot done. We won't meet until the 5th of January, but when we do they are suppose to talk about their STEM project and not get on the computers or get out the robot until I get there and then we will try to have time for 10 minute rotations. I asked if they wanted to keep doing everything or do specializations and the few who understood what that was were all for specializing. I think we need to try this way another couple of times before making that decision.
Some parents have offered to host get-togethers over the holiday. I hope they work out for a little more time together and some team building.
Since everyone had felt strongly about not specializing, about everyone having a chance to do everything, I outlined a rotation schedule where two people would work on robot design, two on programming, and one on driving practice. I space out those who were comfortable with programming so that they would be working with others when it was their turn at the programming station. I also gave a brief overview of the Modkit (MIT Scratch-like) programming language. Almost half of our meeting was gone by that time so we only had time for five minute rotations.
The system worked out well as far as staying on task and not getting bored. Drivers stayed on task for the full five minutes and would have kept driving for longer if they were allowed to. The design group, without a robot to Do and Test on flew through a couple sketches each in their 10 minutes at the design station and needed the most attention to keep their focus. Perhaps if they had built partial components they could handle a longer time.
At the programming station people barely got their feet wet, it wasn't enough time to build something functional and the robot was busy driving so they wouldn't have been able to download to it anyway. They hardly touched their worksheet for the think stage. They could easily use more time and now that they all have had a taste of it, we will use both computers at that station next time.
We did a brief review of how things went and they were all enthusiastic about feeling like they had gotten a lot done. We won't meet until the 5th of January, but when we do they are suppose to talk about their STEM project and not get on the computers or get out the robot until I get there and then we will try to have time for 10 minute rotations. I asked if they wanted to keep doing everything or do specializations and the few who understood what that was were all for specializing. I think we need to try this way another couple of times before making that decision.
Some parents have offered to host get-togethers over the holiday. I hope they work out for a little more time together and some team building.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Programming with Modkit
Today the team dove right into programming with Modkit. Despite their previous objections of it being "too easy", it was great to see how fast they could iterate through modifying their program and downloading and testing it. A couple of team members really excelled at this. I think they will be good teachers for the others.
There was a fair amount of driving control practice between programming iterations but little design modifications. (It was hard to add pieces to a moving robot.) At the end we discussed how we might do this differently on Wednesday and committed to rotating through design, programming, and driver control stations to give everyone a chance.
The team members also can work on becoming familiar with the programming software and a CAD based design software from home. The team members should be able to save their programs to the cloud if they sign in with their EBLS student accounts and the CAD software is free with registration.
There was a fair amount of driving control practice between programming iterations but little design modifications. (It was hard to add pieces to a moving robot.) At the end we discussed how we might do this differently on Wednesday and committed to rotating through design, programming, and driver control stations to give everyone a chance.
The team members also can work on becoming familiar with the programming software and a CAD based design software from home. The team members should be able to save their programs to the cloud if they sign in with their EBLS student accounts and the CAD software is free with registration.
- Programming: http://www.modkit.com/vex
- Design: http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexiq/software/vexassembler
I think that it's valuable to spend a good amount of time in the Think stage of the Think-Do-Test cycle. Even without a robot to or computer to use a lot of valuable brainstorming can be done while working on chores or doodling on a piece of paper.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Group specializations, or not
The second weekday meeting of the Monday/Wednesday team was a little scattered. I was hoping we would have our engineering notebook by now and was trying to get some VEX related software installed on a couple of school computers. I tasked the team with coming up with a name while I worked on those things and they were still unable to come up with something they all agreed on. I tried working through some word associations from books they have read but still no dice.
We then reviewed the tasks they wanted to accomplish by the next challenge and discussed ideas on how to best accomplish the tasks. I suggested breaking into smaller groups focusing on driving, designing and building, programming and the STEM project but they all wanted to drive and do the other things and felt it would not be fair if they didn't get a chance to do everything. So much for specialization. This approach has some advantages, like everyone learning from all the stages, but misses out on the advantages from specialization. I'll bring the choice up again when we get closer to the next challenge.
What I said isn't quite correct. Not everyone was excited about building. All but one were until I said that they need to design before building, then it dropped down to just two and even they weren't exited. I'll have to figure out a way to help them see that it's a good thing to spend a little more time in the thinking and designing stage of the Think-Do-Test iteration loop. I suspect the same kind of thing will show up in the programming.
Speaking of programming, it sounds like most of the team members have had some exposure already. None of them had seen Scratch, but at least two were familiar with doing JavaScript programming stuff on Kahn Academy. After showing them Modkit the first exclamation was "That's too easy!" We'll see how they do programming the robot. I'll trade "too easy" for time wasted running down a syntax error unless they are able to write a winning program in an hour and get bored because it's too easy.
They decided to work on the research project from home after school on Fridays, when they have more time and will collaborate via a shared Google Drive document. This year's STEM research project, as they correctly remembered, is suppose to focus on engineering. The VEX Robotics group has put together a table of how the research project can be mapped to education standards.
I hope that picking an engineering research project isn't as big of a hurdle as picking a team name.
We then reviewed the tasks they wanted to accomplish by the next challenge and discussed ideas on how to best accomplish the tasks. I suggested breaking into smaller groups focusing on driving, designing and building, programming and the STEM project but they all wanted to drive and do the other things and felt it would not be fair if they didn't get a chance to do everything. So much for specialization. This approach has some advantages, like everyone learning from all the stages, but misses out on the advantages from specialization. I'll bring the choice up again when we get closer to the next challenge.
What I said isn't quite correct. Not everyone was excited about building. All but one were until I said that they need to design before building, then it dropped down to just two and even they weren't exited. I'll have to figure out a way to help them see that it's a good thing to spend a little more time in the thinking and designing stage of the Think-Do-Test iteration loop. I suspect the same kind of thing will show up in the programming.
Speaking of programming, it sounds like most of the team members have had some exposure already. None of them had seen Scratch, but at least two were familiar with doing JavaScript programming stuff on Kahn Academy. After showing them Modkit the first exclamation was "That's too easy!" We'll see how they do programming the robot. I'll trade "too easy" for time wasted running down a syntax error unless they are able to write a winning program in an hour and get bored because it's too easy.
They decided to work on the research project from home after school on Fridays, when they have more time and will collaborate via a shared Google Drive document. This year's STEM research project, as they correctly remembered, is suppose to focus on engineering. The VEX Robotics group has put together a table of how the research project can be mapped to education standards.
I hope that picking an engineering research project isn't as big of a hurdle as picking a team name.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Challenge Review
For today's meeting we reviewed lesson learned from the VEX Challenge and talked about things we need to work on. Some of the lessons learned, as shared by the team members, are:
We finished up with some driving practice pushing blocks and an impromptu obstacle course. They had a lot of fun.
- Making modifications at the last minute the robot failed.
- Other teams didn't follow the book build instructions, but that's OK, it isn't necessary to have a good robot.
- Do better at stacking will help.
- Our current robot sometimes doesn't work.
- Size matters, keep in parameters.
- Use the design notebook.
- STEM research project.
- Need a team name.
We had a snag again with the system saying a component needed to be updated and couldn't get the claw going with the borrowed motor that failed to get returned on Saturday. Without internet access or the updater installed on a school computer I was unable to resolve the version update message and figure out if the motor was still OK before returning it. We also seemed to be short our charger. A result of my having to leave early.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Wilson Elementary VEX IQ Challenge
Today was a blast. I was, unfortunately, a few minutes late showing up with the robot and my team, 1129K, was waiting at the doors and excited to get started. It was energizing to see so much enthusiasm, and it seemed to last through the day.
After listening to the instructions and a couple of matches both EBLS teams started to become pros at the whole process. At one point 1129K got a special kudos announcement for being ready with another team in the queue during the skill matches, a first for the event that day.
We had great support from the school and parents. Mrs. K dropped off snacks in the morning and yesterday Pizza was ordered and it was delivered on time. Dr. Johnson came and gave great moral support and took a lot of pictures and we had some parents able to attend and watch.
I was so impressed at how well the two teams handled themselves in the judging portion of the event. They gave well-thought answers and it was obvious they had learned a lot through their own observations.
Unfortunately I had to leave early to take care of another commitment I had made before I became involved in EBLS VEX IQ, but looking at the scores at the end of the day, they made a great showing:
Finalist Rankings:
Teamwork Rankings
Some very good showings for two teams that first got their robot kits two and a half weeks ago and had a holiday eat up a good chunk of that time.
They didn't have the awards listed yet on the web site. I will edit this page and add that as I find out more how things wrapped up and how the awards went.
http://www.robotevents.com/robot-competitions/vex-iq-challenge/re-viqc-14-2472.html
After listening to the instructions and a couple of matches both EBLS teams started to become pros at the whole process. At one point 1129K got a special kudos announcement for being ready with another team in the queue during the skill matches, a first for the event that day.
We had great support from the school and parents. Mrs. K dropped off snacks in the morning and yesterday Pizza was ordered and it was delivered on time. Dr. Johnson came and gave great moral support and took a lot of pictures and we had some parents able to attend and watch.
I was so impressed at how well the two teams handled themselves in the judging portion of the event. They gave well-thought answers and it was obvious they had learned a lot through their own observations.
Unfortunately I had to leave early to take care of another commitment I had made before I became involved in EBLS VEX IQ, but looking at the scores at the end of the day, they made a great showing:
Finalist Rankings:
| Rank | Team# | Name | Points |
| 5 | 1129K | Edith Bowen | 29 |
| 13 | 1129M | Edith Bowen | 15 |
Teamwork Rankings
| Rank | Team# | Name | Points |
| 11 | 1129K | Edith Bowen | 79 |
| 15 | 1129M | Edith Bowen | 62 |
Some very good showings for two teams that first got their robot kits two and a half weeks ago and had a holiday eat up a good chunk of that time.
They didn't have the awards listed yet on the web site. I will edit this page and add that as I find out more how things wrapped up and how the awards went.
http://www.robotevents.com/robot-competitions/vex-iq-challenge/re-viqc-14-2472.html
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Calendar added
I've created a Google Calendar and embedded it into a page on this blog to help myself and others visualize the weekly meetings and the challenges that I'm aware of.
I looked at the EBLS calendar and cleared team practices for days when there isn't any school.
The Monday/Wednesday team gets hit with Monday holidays a few times. When Monday is a holiday but Tuesday isn't, if a Monday/Wednesday team member is willing and able, they can attend on Tuesday of that week instead.
I don't know what the plans are after the championship challenge at the end of February. I am anticipating meeting at least once after as a wrap-up. We will figure out those details as we get closer.
I looked at the EBLS calendar and cleared team practices for days when there isn't any school.
The Monday/Wednesday team gets hit with Monday holidays a few times. When Monday is a holiday but Tuesday isn't, if a Monday/Wednesday team member is willing and able, they can attend on Tuesday of that week instead.
I don't know what the plans are after the championship challenge at the end of February. I am anticipating meeting at least once after as a wrap-up. We will figure out those details as we get closer.
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