I like to use the off-season to teach skills. One year my team really wanted to finish and perfect missions that they had worked on for the tournament. They enjoyed doing that, so they just worked through the missions. The next year, they were burned out on the missions after the tournament, so I gave them mini-missions to solve. We were working towards having soccer playing robots. I started with small tasks: kick a ball into a goal, then use the light sensor to follow a line to a goal, etc.: Our post-season came to an end before we got farther. I felt that my team needed work on discipline and skills, so I taught them again how to calculate the rotations to go a certain distance and for various turns ( 45 degree, 90 degree). I then gave them robot specifications and gave them a mission to solve and program. I built the robot myself outside of meetings. They were not allowed to see "MysteryBot" until they had written and shown me their programs. I did this with them early in the season before I would let them design and build their robot and tackle the food factor missions. I think it would make a good off-season activity. Another idea I had was to have everyone purchase a book and work through the activities in the book. My current favorite is Winning Designs for Lego Mindstorms NXT. With a beginner team, I might prefer The Unofficial Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0. Donna Cornwell [log in to unmask] On 12/5/2011 5:26 PM, Mary Kendrick wrote: > Hi all! > > Well, brand new coach here - we made it to our first tournament, using it as a > learning experience for the years to come. We did fairly well and the team will > continue to meet throughout the rest of the school year. > > Ideas for goals and focus of these meetings is to redesign our robot and work > on programming the robot to accomplish all missions in Food Factor. > > So the question is, how do you vetern coaches run the off-season meetings? > Do you meet off-season, making it a school-year club? Any ideas or > suggestions on how best to use this more relaxed time is GREATLY appreciated! > > Thanks so much, > Mary > TechnoSharks > > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE or CHANGE your settings, please visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-l.html and select "Join or leave the list". > > -- VADCFLL administrative announcements are sent via VADCFLL-ANNOUNCEMENTS-L. Visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-ANNOUNCEMENTS-l.html to subscribe. > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE or CHANGE your settings, please visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-l.html and select "Join or leave the list". -- VADCFLL administrative announcements are sent via VADCFLL-ANNOUNCEMENTS-L. Visit https://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/vadcfll-ANNOUNCEMENTS-l.html to subscribe.