John
Project Leader
The England & Wales National Final was held on 22nd February. It was held at UWE in Bristol. At about 7:45 AM the Team Registration opened and we were allowed to set up our pit. We did one or two robot practices which seemed to go alright. At 8:50 the opening ceremony started, with our good friends Darren and Collin once again being masters of ceremony. After that was our very first robot run. It was done Sam and Louis. It went alright, but perhaps not as good as we would have hoped, the second robot run by me and Jacob later in the day went a bit better, scoring about 230 points. Unfortunately, our third robot run, by Sam and Elsie, was quite similar to the first. We did not qualify for the knock-outs, coming 37th out of about 88 teams. In terms of our presentations, they were mixed too. The core values presentation was more of a Q&A with the judges, but we still managed to say all that we wanted to and they were impressed when we told them that 4/8 of our team members are new. The robot design was alright too, although there was some confusion as there always is between whether it was a Q&A session or a presentation. The judges especially enjoyed the rope mechanism on MTB. The project presentation went marvelously! The judges where engaged all the way through. They enjoyed the fun of our presentation but also grasped the engineering behind it. The best part was when it came to questions, and they were completely speechless! As the robot knockouts were going on through the afternoon, the team enjoyed going to the various STEM stands by Bechtel and other sponsor organisations. Jacob, Sam, and former team leader Peter H (who came as a spectator) had fun building an extremely high tower at the white LEGO bricks section (it was the highest there.) At 3:30 it was time for the award ceremony. We were all on the edge of our seats, or rather, the floor (we didn't come early enough for seats). In the end we won 1st Place project award, which included an invitation to go to the Greek Open International Competition in Thessaloniki. The competition is from the 13-16 May, and 7/8 are currently planning to come. On Thursday 6th May we are planning to go back to Basingstoke Ice Rink for our second victory pizza party! Thank you to all our readers who have stayed with us, and hopefully we will see some of you in Greece!
John Project Leader
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This week's meeting, Thursday 20th, is the last meeting before the City Shaper England & Wales National Final competition in the University of the West of England in Bristol. This morning we started off with doing devotions, then our coach assigned us different tasks. Aram, Elsie, Josh, Louis, Annie, and Jacob were assigned connecting the 2 parts of the key-rings ( the ring and Lego brick with Tech HEds on) together. Sam and John worked on the robot to make it perfect ready for the competition. We then all went outside into the garage to practice the Project and Core Values presentations. After running through them 2 or 3 times each we went back inside to practice our robot presentation before presenting it to our coach. Soon enough it was time for lunch! After eating our lunch some of the younger team members went outside to burn off some energy. While they were outside most of us cracked back on with work which Mrs. Dymond had assigned us. Sam, John, Jacob and Louis did robot runs while the others played some games. Once we had enough practice for Saturday some of us went home while some of the others stated a bit longer to perfect the robot. We all were prepared and hyped for the Big National tournament!!!
Team member, Jacob Today there was another birthday in the diary! Aram’s Birthday!! But that was not the only thing that was unusual because Mrs. Dymond had arranged for us to present our presentation to a local architect and structural engineer. They were rather surprise at the quantity of knowledge. The whole team appreciated the feedback that we received from them. After making our way back to the Dymond’s house we had a slow start to get everything organized and the table put up but when we were finally ready we assembled around the dining room table to begin to talk about and go through the Robot Design, Project, Core Values Presentations, and which jobs each person was to do during the meeting. We decided on:
Annie Team Member 2 Weeks and Counting! This week, as we are nearing competition day, we focused on core values and project. John, Sam, and Jacob spent most of the day working on the robot to improve reliability and build a new frame. We have decided to extend one of our mission runs because we have time left at the end of the challenge. We also decided to reprogram Mission Trip B because we wanted to improve its reliability. However, whilst they were doing “techy stuff,” the rest of us spent the time doing core values and final tweaks to the project.
Over lunch, the weather had been kind enough to us to grace Chippenham with its radiating smiles. This enabled us to resume football for the week, which was very nice. Also, whilst the older ones were playing football, Louis, Josh, Elsie and Annie went and played a different game. After lunch, Mrs. Dymond had come up with a very fun way in which we could spell out our team name – Tech HEds – using our bodies! After much deliberation, we finally managed to compete it, at the same time John finished working on MTB! Great timing, as it was nearing 3:30 and the table and Lego needed packing up until next week! Team Member Aram Today we started with getting the logo board out and robots, then we went to another room and did devotions, then we went into other rooms, sorted out some core value things like the core values presentation, and just things like that. Other team members worked on the robot to make it better. We have done the Regionals, so now we are working toward Nationals! We made our board for the presentation a little better, like adding more things to it. We all made some suggestions for the board! After this we had lunch, we had it inside today as it was too wet and cold outside. Then we went out to play ninja, after lunch. but that did not work as two team members kept running off around the block, it was quite funny though. Soon two other members did as well, not to mention any names!! But then we did manage to play at least one game of Ninja before we came back inside! Then we did more things for the core values presentation and the board. However, soon enough the day came to an end, so we all started to pack away everything and soon left.
Team member, Elsie |
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