[FTC]: Engineering Notebook - PR and Electronic

[gblake]

Originally Posted by jasonbrooks

Hi,
I have a question: is the engineering notebook strictly limited to building and programming, or can/should we include all the PR stuff we do and have seperate entries for days where all we do is PR and fundraising?

Also can people post links to electronic engineering notebooks? We are thinking of using that this year, but want to see some examples first! Do judges think of them less highly because they look "perfect" when printed and aren't ripped and dirty (you know what I mean)!

Thanks!

#1 Read the evaluation criteria - Make the material you record and the way you use it match the eval criteria.

I tell students and judges not to think of any notes, "engineering" or otherwise, as diaries. Telling students to record info that is never used again (except by a judge) is very close to training them to waste time.

I instead urge both creators and reviewers to remember that notes are a tool. For that reason the later sections of a useful notebook should contain evidence of referring to the early sections.

STEM Robotics engineering usually involve a certain amount of intellectually messy iteration. similarly, community outreach and PR activities should be compared to past successes and failures to improve their effectiveness.

Paper or electronic notes are how you do a good job of recording the past so that you can compare it to the present.

So, if I am a judge, a messy notebook that is full of examples of real use; win hands-down over a pristine notebook that is simply a diary. My guess is that ensuring your notebook is one of the team's tools will implicitly answer both of your original questions.

I will also appreciate finding a table of contents in the first couple of pages, and/or finding tabs or post-it note types of flags that lead me to specific important sections.

Blake