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Re: Off-Season Projects
This off season I will be working on the curriculum for two Lego camps that I am going to run; an "Advanced RoboCamp" and a "RoboCamp for Girls". The Advanced RoboCamp will be open to 5-7th graders, and the RoboCamp for Girls will be the same...except obviously for girls.
As well as teaching the kids about Legos, I will also invite members of my own team (who have never worked with or taught legos) to attend the camp. There they will learn the basics of legos (and teaching legos -- which is an entirely different thing from just knowing about them), so that they can in turn go on to mentor their own teams. Our robotics team has only successfully started and mentored one Lego League team, (mentored by me) and it is time that others step up to the plate to learn how!
I also want to develop a workshop, to be held in the fall, for new members of my robotics team. This year we had ALOT of rookies join, but almost all of them dropped out, which is something that I would like to prevent from happening in the future. This workshop will be intended to:
1) Give rookies an overview of the FIRST Robotics Competition
2) Give rookies a basic knowledge about FIRST Robots.
3) Help rookies find their place on the team.
4) Build a sense of teamwork within the group.
I originally wanted to do this during an independent study course this semester, but because of scheduling complications, I couldn't. I think it will now become a summer project for me!
I also need to work on fundraising and marketing things for our team, as I am the Student Marketing Director, among other things. I will need to write fundraising letters, make presentations to potential sponsors, and other similar tasks.
And my team will also do some other type of technical offseason project... usually we rebuild one of our old robots to do something we didn't choose to do during the competition season...just to give the rookies some practice. For example, last year we converted one of our old robots into a ball handler (our competition robot for that year was a hanging bot).
There are many things to do... hopefully I will find the time to do it all!
-- Jaine
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Florida Institute of Technology
Ocean Engineering, '12
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