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First Lego League in Virginia and DC

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First Lego League in Virginia and DC <[log in to unmask]>
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From:
VA/DC Referee Advisor <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 31 Oct 2013 11:03:50 -0400
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VA/DC Referee Advisor <[log in to unmask]>
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Many teams choose to bring program printouts as a visual aid to show the
design judges.  If your team has created a design notebook to document the
history of the robot evolution, it certainly makes a nice addition.

Different judges will use program printouts differently to generate
questions for the team.  They can certainly be helpful when talking about
Programming Efficiency, and may be useful for the team in describing the
other Programming topics as well.


Case study for coaches:
Sample design judge--SS
- SS is a programmer by career/hobby -- would probably enjoy talking
programming with your team for 20-30 minutes--that's not going to happen
- SS wears bifocals  -- may be slow to switch between looking at the team,
looking at a book, and watching the robot demonstrate some programs
- SS is not an experienced Mindstorms programmer -- more likely to
recognize patterns in a Mindstorms printout than spend time examining
things step-by-step

Your team wants to be able to present its work to judges who are genuinely
interested in what they've done and learned.  They are interested in all
three areas--Mechanical Design, Programming, and Strategy/Innovation.  Many
of them won't be programmers, and only a few will be able to examine all
the details of your programming.

Your team members are proud and excited about what they've learned and
done, but they won't have time to recount every decision over an 8-week
season during a 10-minute interview.

Challenge them to describe what they've done overall, and identify what's
interesting, what details are special.  This is hard for some younger team
members--they're focused on the step-by-step process, and haven't taken
time to think about things from a "big picture" viewpoint.

Steve Scherr
VA/DC FLL Referee Advisor




On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 9:58 AM, Tom Hafer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  Surely we are not supposed to bring printouts of all the programs
> involved in this year’s mission? That would fill a small book****
>
> ** **
>
> I didn’t see anything about that in the rules.****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* First Lego League in Virginia and DC [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Tom Spalthoff
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 31, 2013 9:12 AM
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>
> *Subject:* Re: [VADCFLL-L] Help with printing programs****
>
>  ** **
>
> Another approach is to "break" the program blocks up and arrange them on
> the screen in a more reader-friendly configuration before printing.  You
> can always use a pencil to connect the last block on the right to the first
> block on the left to show the flow.  It's only for explanation purposes, so
> it's not a big deal that the program won't "run" that way - it's the
> content of the blocks that matters.****
>
> ** **
>
> --Tom****
>  ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 01:49:46 -0700
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [VADCFLL-L] Help with printing programs
> To: [log in to unmask]****
>
> As Rich Tate sugessted, use NXT's print to HTML file.  This will produce a
> *.png file and if your program is very long it will be a long skinny
> image.  If you open this into MS Word or PowerPoint you'll find it will
> either print to small for your to read or if it is readable it will
> truncate and not print the end of the program.  Frustrating.  Believe it or
> not, MS Excel does a very good job of printing the long skinny *.png files
> without the need to fuss over taking screenshots of each page.  Open the
> file in Excel using the 'Insert Picture' and select the png file.  Go to
> print preview and using page setup select "fit to" and set it to 3 or 4
> pages wide (use whatever number makes it fit best) by 1 page high.  You can
> fine-tune how the images are spread across the number of pages you select
> by changing the margins to your liking.
>
> It's a bit non-intuitive to use a tool like Excel to print the images of
> NXT programs, but it is much faster than having to take individual screen
> shots of every page.  To my knowledge, Excel is the only MS application
> that can deal with printing long and skinny images properly.
>
> Pete Zulkarnain****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> On Wednesday, October 30, 2013 9:09 PM, Gina Willett <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:****
>
> Can anyone tell me how to print out a program that uses 20+ blocks without
> it being so tiny that you can't hardly read it?  I have tried everything!*
> ***
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks in advance for your help!****
>
> ** **
>
> Gina Willett****
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