1. Fall 2011 was my first year with FLL
2. Having never seen a NXT before I jumped right in with a Team who had their first competition in 3 short weeks. We didn't use a single sensor and changed our programs after every run, but we had a blast.
3. I have taught several workshops of up to 30 teachers at a time. My favorite was to divide them into teams of 3 and have them build the
5 minute bot . I also gave them build instructions on how to attach a touch sensor, light sensor, and ultrasonic sensor. After building their robot their job was to navigate through a maze in which different parts required that they must use a specific sensor.
I taught them how to program the touch sensor and let them figure out how to get through that portion of the maze. Same thing for the light sensor and ultrasonic. The last part of the maze had FLL mission models and they were required to complete one mission before crossing the finish line. Each sensor section had a place for the robot to start a new program to learn that sensor. After teams made it through the maze I challenged them to combine all their programs and send their robot through the maze all on its own.
The maze was just on one FLL table and split up using 2x4 boards and orange cones as obstacles. The ultrasonic obstacles were a couple of slow moving gates using Jr. FLL motors. I had the teachers for a full day 9 am - 2 pm with a lunch break. They really enjoyed it. Later on I used the same maze workshop for the returning and new FLL students on my team.
4. This year I liked my teams solution for the search engine mission, which the problem they had to solve changed every time.
5. When we have robotics camps or just groups visiting our building
LEGO sumo is definitely our go to activity. It helps get them interested in LEGO robots. Most have never seen FLL before so we give them the Sumo program to run on their robot. We give them about an hour to 1.5 hours to build their sumo bot from scratch. If they need help we give them a guide with different ways to attach motors to the NXT. Every team has at least made a moving robot at the end of their build time. We then run a round robin tournament for fun.
6. Mostly just the maze and sumo workshops. I have also used previous FLL mission models to make a simpler FLL board. I then let the kids pick their own missions and make the programs to try to complete as many as they can in 2:30 to get a feel of the FLL style. The board was simpler so they could do a few missions in just the 1 or 2 days that we had to meet.