Hathaway Brown/ MIT Tournament & Expo

Minifigure Maniacs - Competing & Cheering


I wonder if, at some point, I will stop being amazed.  Six months (plus two days) ago we had our first Parents' Meeting.  It took another two months before teams were truly formed.  This past Saturday, we had members of all TEN teams come out to participate, judge, learn & cheer on the robots and Lego models at the Hathaway Brown FIRST Tournament. 

The teams who participated made an outstanding performance!  I saw two of the Minifigure Maniacs stand when the "Gracious Professionalism" awards were announced.  Those are awards given by the judges for students who, without knowing they are being watched, do something spontaneously awesome.  In some way they displayed the spirit of teamwork, kindness, and graciousness that embodies the core principles of FIRST.  Truly, what could be better than THAT?? 

As for the Junior teams, we are SO proud of you!! 

Funky Self-Destructors - Yeaaa Team !

The Awesome Eyeballs - Truly Awesome!

Lego Strikers -  Be Proud !!

Lego Destroyers !!   Outstanding Performance! 

A tremendous thank you to all of the coaches, mentors & parents who have worked so hard to bring these incredible teams together this Fall.  Be proud of your teams and yourselves.  Please also continue their team spirit by inviting them to cheer on the FLL teams competing Saturday, Dec 11th and Sunday, January 9th. 

We will also be having a coaches' meeting in January and more exciting events to come! 

Eyeballs to Eyeballs

One of the many beauties of our coaches' meetings is the ability to share our talents across teams.  On this particular day, Susan Robertson, Team S.O.L.O.N. captain, led the Awesome Eyeballs in the dissection of real eyeballs.  Fortunately for us, these particular cows agreed to donate their organs to science.

This is a retina! 

This is Wesley, discovering exactly what a real eyeball lens looks like.

Here are Christopher and Molly (with Silas peeking) - utterly amazed.



 And Ryan as well.







The next step was trying it out for themselves!  Michael was fascinated.

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This was just so cool, we couldn't keep a way a few interlopers from Team S.O.L.O.N.

 

Truly, if Mrs. Robertson's class is always this interesting, its a wonder any of those Middle Schoolers ever go home.

Team S.O.L.O.N. hard at work!

And what exactly does S.O.L.O.N. stand for???   Wouldn't you like to know? 

Club News - October

Next Coaches’ Meeting:  Monday, Oct 11^th   7:30 pm  -  Timken Building  30575 Bainbridge Suite 280

Tournament Registration - 

FLL Teams should be registered for Tournament.  Please put Hudson as choice #1 and HB as choice #2.  You will not be placed for a few weeks, but I’ve spoken to Kathy Levine and hopefully she will be able to place us together.  

Jr. FLL teams cannot register yet.  HB has agreed to have a Jr. FLL tournament (with our assistance!)   I will let everyone know when registration opens. 

Jr. FLL Expo & FLL Tournament Expansion

HB has agreed to host a Jr. FLL Expo with our assistance.  If you are interested in helping out PLEASE let me know.  We will need help !!!  I will be visiting HB to check out their facility on Tuesday, Oct 12^th.   I would be delighted to have someone join me to help out.   I’m hoping in particular some FLL team parent/coach might be willing to be involved.  HB is expanding their FLL tournament and would like some additional judges.  My understanding is that you CAN judge at a tournament within FLL as long as your child is not specifically competing in THAT tournament.  Could be a great opportunity to go through judges training and really understand that rubric. 

Please think about whether you would be willing to help with a tournament in Solon next year.  These are all opportunities to get involved to make Solon’s first try a huge success. 

November Scrimmage

I assume this will be a big topic at the Monday meeting.  Think about dates. 

T-shrits

The general consensus at the last meeting was to develop a common Solon Engineers’ Club logo that everyone could use on their t-shirts.  That way, the kids could still be creative with their own logos but have a unified theme.  Those who want to have a unified color, seemed to prefer white.  I’m going to be crazy and bold and throw ‘light gray’ out there.   I know Denise has some concepts for logos.  If you have a thought, please bring in Monday.  To be discussed on Monday.  (We’ll see if the parents can be just as good at being gracious, professional brainstormers as our kids are becoming).  Ha.

Communications

For those who haven’t checked it out, Michele Fry started a Solon Engineers’ Club entity on Facebook to help us communicate.  Thank you!  I have also thrown up a blog that can be found at http://solonengineersclub.blogspot.com/.   The idea is to give a communication spot for us that can be developed and changed along with whatever the teams need.  I can easily make at least one person on each team an author.  If a kid wants to run it, all the better.  If your team would like to create its own blog, then we will link the sites together.   This should be a forum to get ideas & a place to celebrate all the cool stuff that the kids are doing. 

If we post all our pertinent communications up there, then nothing will ever get lost.  

Field Trips!!  Some for Adults, some for Kids

1.   Mindstorms Music  This Saturday 10 – 12pm  at Orange Public Library for kids 12 –16 years.  The kids will have the opportunity to build and program robots to respond and make music.  Sounds pretty cool.  Register at cuyahogalibrary.com

 

2.  Wednesday, Oct 20^th, AFTERNOON 4pm – 6pm.  Great Lakes Science Center.  EVENT:  Tour of the MIT-style Fab Lab installed for use by Cleveland Public School’s Science & Technology High School on site at the GLSC.  Read more on MIT’s website.  http://fab.cba.mit.edu/

COST: $15/ MIT Club members, $20/ guests.

Club Contact:  Nadine Otterman   Nadine@alum.mit.edu

This is the MIT Style Fabrication lab I mentioned at the coaches’ meeting.  This is for ADULTS.  Although, we are visiting a high school, so if one or two Middle School students wanted to join, I think that would be acceptable.  Please don’t bring Elementary students.  If the online registration is finicky, just let me know and I will save you a spot. 

3. Tuesday, Feb 22^nd,  AFTER SCHOOL.  This is still tbd, but I am working on putting together an event that would allow our kids to visit the Mars Exhibit (opening Jan 29^th – shhhhh!!!)  and listen to a talk by a Director of Earth and Planetary Sciences at MIT. 

4. Monday – Friday  Feb 21^st – 26^th.   I have this vague idea that we should showcase our teams within the Solon Schools during Engineers’ Week.  Just a teaser of what is to come =).  

 

The Gracious Geeks are Born!

Welcome to the Solon Engineers' Club Blog site.  If you have a FIRST team in Solon, please obtain access by sending an email to solonengineersclub@gmail.com or by posting on this blog.  We'll get you set-up! 

With respect & admiration,

Nadine Otterman