At 11:11 AM -0400 8/26/09, Rusty West wrote:
>If some of you who have your table set up could post a short video 
>on youtube that might help with some of the new teams.  I just 
>checked and there aren't any smart move videos yet.  For some of the 
>newer coaches you can see some teams that had perfect table run in 
>previous years.  These are very inspiring.
>
>Rusty West

Rusty,

YouTube videos from previous FLL years are excellent for learning and 
inspiration--I showed selected ones to our team last fall to get 
their creative juices flowing and to get them to think outside the 
box instead of defaulting to designs and strategies they'd used 
before. I especially like videos that show a team working well 
together at the table, with smooth and practiced coordination between 
the team members.

But you might not expect to see many YouTube videos of the current 
year's challenge until much later in the season. I recall that last 
year nearly the videos related to Climate Connections were a few that 
showed how to set up the table and those wee videos from FIRST 
showing how to earn points for each mission. Not really surprising: I 
wouldn't expect too many teams to be eager to share their robot 
design and mission strategies before the regional tournament.

And I'm not sure I'd want my team to see current-year videos either. 
I'd rather see them brainstorm and come up with ideas on their own. 
Kids at this age can be extremely and surprisingly creative. But they 
can also very easily be steered and limited if potential solutions 
are suggested from the outside. Even those little FIRST videos can 
guide their thinking, so I don't even bother to show them those.

Of course at the end of the season it's fun to see how other teams 
approached the table missions, so we're all eager to see 
perfect-performance videos on YouTube. Guaranteed to elicit cries of, 
"hey, that's what we did too!!" and "wow, why didn't we think of 
that??" :)

Cheers,
Mike

-- 
Cheers,
Mike Blanpied
Reston, VA
2006 #4809 Nano People
2007 #1666 Power Bunnies
2008 #5013 BLT--Brilliant LEGO Team

______________________________________________________________
To UNSUBSCRIBE or CHANGE YOUR SETTINGS, please visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-l.html and select "Join or leave the list".

If you want to join the VADCFLL-ADMIN-L mailing list - to which FLL administrative announcements will be distributed - visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-admin-l.html and select "Join or leave the list".