It's too bad that someone has posted this.  I don't think it's okay, and it spoils the fun of figuring out the challenge on their own.  However, there is no way that judges could deduct points for anything that was similar, because there will always be teams who have the same ideas of how to solve a mission, that just happened to come up with a similar solution, or even one that looks exactly alike.  So that wouldn't be fair for judges to deduct points.  That is actually probably going to happen a lot with some of these missions, that many teams will have a similar idea on how to solve something.  We had a research idea one year that another team in another state won an award for, and so they had some videos about them on the internet.  And literally, it was almost our team's exact idea, many things about it were exactly the same.  Yet, my team had never heard of this other team, talked to them, etc.  It happens.  

If my team had found that video by accident, I would have had them turn it off immediately and not let them be influenced by it, unless they saw it without you knowing, at another time.  I think the point you want to emphasize is not, "don't copy their ideas because you might get caught and get points deducted" but rather, the more important reasons why they wouldn't want to copy someone else's ideas.  It is not nearly as easy to copy someone's idea though, because you still have to write the program and make it work.  However, with only a week to go, they must be fairly close to finalizing their programming anyway.



Sonya


On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Sean Paus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
One of my team members just found a YouTube video that shows a robot solving the Body Forward robot missions:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCsTDr1-wOM

Obviously, several members of my team asked me "Can we do that?".  I cautioned them that judges may be aware of this video and may deduct points for using someone else's solution.  Would that be a fair assessment?

I, personally, am very disappointed to find that someone posted solutions to this problem before the end of the tournament season.  I'd prefer that my boys come up with their own solutions to the missions.  I would not rule out researching robot designs and programs that solve different, yet similar problems.   However, handing them solutions to the current challenge seems ... wrong to me.

What are other coaches thoughts on this?  How about anyone who may be judging competitions in the VA/DC area?

Sean M. Paus
FLL Coach

--
A: Yes
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?
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