LEGO League Schedule

    
             
     

The 2007 the Challenge is:

POWER PUZZLE

(Alternative Energy - Meeting the Global Demand)

 

Click to Download 2007 FLL Schedule!

 

The season starts off quickly with a meeting for parents, mentors, and teachers during the first week of school (Adults only on Sept 6th) and the kickoff the next monday night (This is for the kids on Sept 10th)!

  • Adults (Parents, Mentors, Coaches, Teachers)   Thurs       Sept 6th

  • Children for the Kickoff                                     Monday   Sept 10th

West side of Madison meetings will be held at Memorial High School at 6 PM on Monday and Thursday nights.  See the maps page to guide you to the cafeteria near the planetarium by 6:15 PM!  East side of Madison meetings will have the same schedule but a location is not yet set.

 

Third year FLL teams are free to take the second weekly meeting (Th) and hold it somewhere other than Memorial after the first week of kickoff.  All teams are expected to attend at their side of town's main meeting site on Mondays as experienced teams should be mentoring and assisting startup teams.

 

Download the full 2007 LEGO League season schedule and the Permission Slip for the season in PDF form at the LEGO League Documents page.

 

Individuals interested in mentoring or coaching a team should contact Chris Hunt or Teri Hedges or Ben Senson by April 1st, 2007 (if at all possible).  Yes, you can get started later than that, but please make it easy on us to try to raise funds to lower team costs.  Coaches duties... be there every meeting and look after the kids, keep them on track.  Program leaders, high school mentors, guest speakers, and skilled parents and teachers will teach required materials.  No expereince is necessary to get started, we'll get you up to speed ASAP.  We need your help!

 

Our next LEGO Robotics training for parents, mentors, and teachers to participate in will be in May of 2008 through our "Training for Mentors" course.  Please use this link to view course details.

 

Our plan for meetings. 

West side of Madison

We are planning to meet at Memorial High School twice a week September through early November.  By meeting at the same place, all the different Lego League teams can share resources and help each other out.  We will have two open computer labs, lots of space, and lots of kids who have done Lego League before so can help you out.  We will also have many high school robotics club members to assist with mentoring, and can provide special opportunities such as visits by engineering students or specialists in fields related to the research topic.  This is an attractive opportunity for a guest speaker as they can address our entire group in one sitting.  Participating at the high school is one of the criteria for our ability to help support the teams with outside grants.  We have a uniform fee of $250 per team plus $40 per student regardless of whether or not it is a rookie or experienced team.  We will have "mixed" teams with students from multiple schools so everyone has the opportunity to participate. Team T-shirts are an individual expense per student.  Teams will design their own T-shirt for the season.

At the first meeting, teams learn the details of the competition for the year.  New teams spend most of their first season just figuring out how to build a robot using Mindstorms, mastering the basics of computer programming with Robolab, learning the requirements of the tournament, and having fun.  All teams start the season by coming up with a team name and logo, brainstorming on how to accomplish the missions, and carry out a research project related to the annual theme of the season.  Students typically break into specialties, such as programming, research, and robot design/building.  All the computers at the group meeting site can be used to program the robot (we use RoboLab) and can provide internet access.  One of our goals this year is to provide ways for more experienced kids to help others with programming.

We plan on meeting Monday and Thursday, 6:15 – 7:45 PM.  Monday we do most of the administrative stuff, have guest speaker, and carry out large group learning sessions.  Thursday is set aside as a work day so mentors can provide more intense one-on-one attention to our teams and more experienced teams can help out the beginners.  Note that some 3rd year teams choose to work at a different site on Thursdays.  Some teams meet a third time each week, as well.  Teams sometimes decide to take a full competition set (4'x8’ table and accessories, exactly like those used in the competition) and place it at the school of origin or in the basement of a team member.  This way the kids can work on their robot after school and on weekends.  The  team can borrow the equipment to take it out of the group meeting site after placing a deposit with BadgerBOTS. 

East Side of Madison

Following on the great success of the west side program, we are expanding so that East side kids can participate as well.  Specific site information will be provided as soon as it is available but the structure is the same as on the west side.  The difference is that we won't have any experienced teams yet.Can't wait to get started!   See you all soon...

    
 

 

 

      
             
 

Copyright 2007, BadgerBOTS Robotics, Team 1306