Thanks to the all organizers, judges, volunteers for their hard work to
make the tournament successful at Chantilly.
I am coaching a team since last 2 years, but I I have
enough experience from coaching teams in other STEM activities (Odyssey of the
mind etc.) to guide a team and observe a team. If I understand correctly the
main purpose of FLL is to motivate students to involve in STEM and apply to
the real world. Last week our team was competing in division II in Chantilly
High school. The team had a sound score on all 3rd round of robot
performance. All our team members are very focused and very interested in
science, academically very bright. I am working with them since last 6 years
and very proud of them. Some of the team members have 3-4 years of NXT
programming experience. When they were practicing I realized how much
hard work, perfection, calculation and time management needed to get a good
score in the tournament. In reality most of the teams struggle with
managing time of 150 minutes. Last week in Chantilly,most of the division
II ( above 7 grade) could not achieve 200 points in any of the round where
3rd/4th grader rookie team got a consistence score in all 3 rounds above (250-
390). Unbelievable!
Sorry to ask this question to the coaches who are programming the robot
for their teams, Are you giving chance to the kids to learn or your main
priority is to get an award and proceed to the next level? Definitely, FLL
Core value does not allow this.
FLL should give a spontaneous robot task to the teams to program and run
the robot during the robot design and programming judging time to test the
ability of the team.
Thanks.