*(thought I had sent a response earlier, but haven't seen it come through,
here's a second go at it)*

Adam,

Last year was our first year and we very much underestimated the project
part of FLL and learned a lot from the experience of unpreparedness.  This
year we dove right in with research, field trips, etc and are energized.  I
wish that we had asked for more help from veteran teams and mentors last
year - it's my one regret.  We're in Richmond and if we can help by visiting
with your team or chatting a bit, we're more than happy to do that.

Good luck!  So much to learn the first time around. <<sigh>>.

Hilary Sharpe


On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Eric Crutchfield <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Hi Adam,
> I was wondering that myself, so thanks for asking.
>
> I'll share our experience as a new team to see if it helps you decide one
> way or the other. We decided to push our team of 10 5th grades to do both
> project and robot, even though we didn't start meeting until Sept. 12th. We
> spent the first 3 weeks building lego's, talking about the project, and
> teaching them how to program the robot. Everyone was programming (4 laptops
> with teams of 2-3 on each) almost every practice up until this last week.
> Then we changed the structure so that just our best programmers are
> programming (3-4), and we have 2 other teams, project (3-4) and robot design
> (3). While the project group was a little put off at first, they seemed to
> take to the job at hand with enthusiasm. We'll see if that holds true
> tomorrow, and if this will be a successful way to organize the daunting
> amount of work at hand.
>
> Good luck, whichever way you decide to go!
>
> Cheers,
> Eric Crutchfield
> Binary Beasts
> Oak Grove Elementary, Roanoke
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Adam Coonin wrote:
>
>  A quick question, and sorry if it is obvious to everyone.  Can our rookie
> team enter a tournament and not present a project?  the team is very new and
> is much more focused on the robot game without much time for the project in
> the rookie year.  We know we would not be eligible to win the tournament.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Adam
>
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