[EricH]

Originally Posted by MichelleGraf

Thanks!

Also, can anyone answer: What topics could rookie teachers/teams use the most help with?

Reading a technical document and all of its associated updates and interpretations. In this case, the rules. As an inspector this year, I hadn't officially started inspections yet at the regional I was at, but I was wandering the pits taking a look at the various designs and looking for the blatant stuff. Two rookie teams had mis-interpreted the same definition. I gave them a little help to get in compliance (fortunately, it was a set of "The rule says... You have... trim this and shift this to X which is about 3.5" that way, and you should be fine for the sizing box"). I don't remember many (if any) other teams having issues with that particular rule at that event.

This also fits under Game Strategy: Keeping a schedule. It's easy to spend about 3 weeks debating what strategy and design and spend another 3 weeks prototyping. It's a lot harder to get all that done in 3 weeks and build the robot in another 3 weeks. For a rookie, there isn't much experience, so you have to go with your gut... and sometimes, you figure out mid-build that your gut is wrong and change the plan.

Also, if you're targeting this to rookies, you might want to check out MOEMentum and Team-in-a-Box for some other topics that are helpful to that audience specifically.