Our team has done a little brainstorming, but the ideas are all over the
map.  It might be education, it might be studying the various parts of the
trash/recycling pipeline and inventing something to help make it more
environmentally friendly.  Who knows!

Interesting thought about the corporate sponsorship... we'll keep that one
in mind.

My team hasn't shown a great interest in writing apps, they seem to like to
invent new products instead.  In the spirit of "kids do the work", what age
to the teams usually start writing apps?  I'm a professional Software
Engineer, and it seems a little far-fetched that my 10 year olds are going
to be writing code this year.  I'm sure I could teach them the basics, but
then the project would be more about learning to code (IMHO). Are there
good "kid friendly" frameworks that have proven effective for early FLL
aged kids that let them skip past most of the necessary ceremony of coding
and write something that actually works?

Thanks,
Frank




On Sat, Jul 11, 2015 at 9:11 PM, B Bergenstock <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Is it possible to find out who is sponsoring the State tournament?  I
> don't want to sound cynical, but the year my team did "Food factor" the
> state tournament was sponsored by a food packaging company, and only teams
> whose research project related to packaging made it to the awards and thus
> moved on Our team did a food factor safety form the farm aspect- the kids
> worked on curing white nose fungus in bats, which are animals that eat 300
> tons of insects and keep 53 billion dollars worth of pesticides off our
> food, making it safer. The trail from safe farming practices to safe food
> was a bridge too far for the judges at state.  My kids were disappointed by
> the questions of the judges. It was the ten year who at our team round up
> suggested we figure out who was a sponsor if we wanted to move on at state
> :)
>
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2015 at 8:46 PM, Amy [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello...I'm just curious if there's any of the teams that have been
>> through numerous challenges might have some thought on this year's
>> challenge. The challenge teasers say - "From collection, to sorting, to
>> smart production and reuse, there is more to your trash than meets the
>> eye".
>>
>> This seems to preclude teams for making things that would educate people
>> to stop using certain products - water bottles, single-use bags, balloons,
>> etc. For example, if a team wanted to design an app that taught kids about
>> how a certain project is affecting the environment or encouraging them to
>> make better choices, etc, this doesn't seem like it would fit into the
>> above teaser. But this seems to be one of the most important ways we reduce
>> some forms of trash, through education.
>>
>> So I was just wondering what people thought? I know the challenge doesn't
>> come out for another month and a half and it's all just guessing and no one
>> really knows, but our team has been working on their research during the
>> summer and really want to do something educational, but I hate to let them
>> get too far in that direction if it's going to be something not within the
>> realm of the challenge.   They're really only doing research right
>> now...not working on their solution...but they keep trying to decide on one
>> solution that they really like.  So I was just wondering.  I would really
>> appreciate any thoughts!
>>
>> Thanks much!
>> Amy Nichols
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