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