Hi Adam,

 

To answer your question directly, the team doesn’t have to present a research project. 

 

Just sign-up for the tournament and skip the project portion – don’t forget to stop by to tell the judges at your time slot that they will not do the project presentation so the judges don’t wait or send runners to find your team. 

 

Make sure the kids have FUN and enjoy the FLL experience, but don’t forget that there are four  parts to the FLL tournament.  Each part is 25% of the total tournament score, so the maximum you can get is 75% without participating in the project presentation.  In addition, without a project presentation – FLL rules, your team will not qualify for any award (even if they got a perfect 400 at the table on the Robot Game, or top score on Team Work). 

 

The four parts of the competition include:

1)      Robot Game – 1 practice run (doesn’t count), and 3 actual competition runs where the best score count

2)      Project Presentation – 5 minute presentation plus 5 minute Q&A

3)      Robot Design Judging – where the kids will demonstrate their robot to judges on a full competition table

4)      Team Work Judging – where the kids will be judge on how they work together as a team

 

If they skip the project presentation, just make sure they still go to the Robot Design and Team Work portions.  There is no extra effort for these two areas.  Just make sure they print the codes (screen print – paste into a Word file – print from Word, etc.) for the Robot Design and plan for all the kids to take turn talking and run the robot on any of the missions.  In the Team Work judging, the kids will be presented with a challenge (last year challenge – “arrange yourself in any order” – different every year) and have 5 minutes to come up with the answer with 5 minutes for questions by the judges – they either will do well as a TEAM or not!  The Rubrics in the coach hand book outline these judging areas.  And don’t forget to introduce themselves in any judging session while you (the coach) must remain totally silence during their presentation and Q&A.

 

… I know the programming and solving the robot missions are overwhelming for a rookie team, but if you can consider any simple project that they can do, it will complete their FLL experience – and prepare them for next year.  A simple project such as solution for fixing a cut or burn on their finger will be okay – the kids will have a lot of fun presenting a silly solution – i.e. one dress up like a flame, one dress up like a doctor and put toothpaste on a burn, etc.!

 

Cheers,

 

T. (Curt) Tran

Judges Advisor, TJHSST Regional ’09

Mentor Team #5390, Kilmer-I ’09

Mentor Team #8941, Kilmer-II ’09

Coach Team #324, Scitobor ’08

Coach Team #3563, Rabid Llama Lords ’07

 

 

 

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