paper: Running A JrFLL Expo

[Rich Kressly]

Jess Scolnic's senior project at LMHS was to organize and run a JrFLL Expo. As part of her effort, she's publishing all documentation here and will respond to your comments and questions. Enjoy.

[Phil Ross]

Not only did Jess work hard on her project, but she organized a fantastic event. This is something worth checking out (even if you already run successful events). There are aspects of this project that you might not have thought of. I know that our team is looking for feedback on this as well, so anything you can give us would be much appreciated.

[McGurky]

Thank you ALOT! I was planning on doing something like this soon and this will help. It is great to see such young people getting interested in Robotics!!! now, these same people will be growing up and they will be the future of your team!!

[Rich Kressly]

Note...
the URLS listed in the whitepaper are inaccurate as FIRT has reorganized the sites. I'll have Jess update the file and post again.

[Rich Kressly]

Update,

1712 ran two Jr. FLL Expos again this fall, one of which was once again entirely run by 1712 students for the Lower Merion Elementary Schools and surrounding area (the second is at the opposite end of the county where I happen to live). Current team captain Delia Votsch was this year's coordinator for the LM Expo and did a marvelous job communicating with parents and teams, organizing volunteers, etc.

We're so pleased to know what started out as Jess's senior project has become a recurring community event. Delia has already helped select next year's coordinator and we'll also upload some updates to Jess' how to guide and support files.

We've found that these Expos are best executed with a lot of hands on and learning activities for the 6-9 year olds while the Expo is going on. Thus we've rolled a lot of our "Portable Inspiration" workshop package into these events. In 2009 the "stations" that the students visited included simple machines, teamwork, playing Pyramid Mania (a VEX robotics game), going through event reviewing, participating in team peer reviewing, meeting Dawgma, building a tall LEGO tower, and more.

Here's a press release from our district website:
http://www.lmsd.org/sections/veritas...2_itemId=22532

Here's last year's press release:
http://www.lmsd.org/sections/veritas...2_itemId=10847

Jr. FLL photo galleries from both years' events are linked here:
http://dawgma.lmtechclub.org/media/photos/

These events are affordable, easy to plan and run (compared to other FIRST events) and are fabulous starters in FIRST that target the inspiration of our youngest minds. If your team isn't involved, you REALLY should think about it or something like it for the youngest of our students.

[Delia]

Thanks Kres for the nice shout out.

I just want to stress how easy it is to put this kind of event together. If you use the resources listed above your biggest hurdle will be communicating with teams and parents. I'll be posting a FAQ sheet on here soon that I'm sure will be very helpful to anyone coordinating an event. It's a fairly easy way to make a huge impact. Good luck and feel free to email me at deliavotsch@yahoo.com if you have any questions!