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[DPRG] RE: BEST Robotics
Subject: [DPRG] RE: BEST Robotics
From: Lance Rose
lrose at jhsi.com
Date: Mon Oct 23 09:33:07 CDT 2006
We (Mt. Vernon High School) competed Saturday and we had a blast. The
real thanks go the Jon and whole BEST staff and to Texas Instruments. I
still cannot believe that an event such as this is put on every year at
NO COST to the school. I made a statement once that every school in
Texas should have a BEST team. Someone overheard me and said they
would, if they could find enough adults. This is an amazing thing for
kids to get involved. We pulled kids from ever corner of our school.
Geeks (of course), athletes, band members, choir members, white,
hispanic, black, guys, girls, rich, poor.
The best part of the whole 6 weeks, for me this year, was in between
rounds 3 and 4 (I think). I watched as 4 kids, each with their own
opinion of what we needed to do, had to decide which idea would be
implemented. They had about 10 minutes to decide what to do, take the
robot apart, fix it, put it back together. 3 of these kids ideas were
not going to be used, but they were all needed to get the robot back
together before the next round. They did it! That's teamwork. That's
the spirit of BEST. And we scored well the next round!
Speaking of the spirit of BEST. In the "pit area" were all the teams
where working on their robot between rounds, we were asked to borrow a
hack saw. We had to borrow an allen wrench from another team. I heard
one of the teams telling another team how get their robot fixed. These
are the teams that would possibly be going head to head the very next
round!
People complain that kids are TV, internet, video game addicted and all
have short attention spans. Well I know about 25 kids from MVHS that
spent extra hours after school, on Saturday and Sundays, working around
other activities and after school jobs for 6 weeks to get this done.
How often do other activities have the kids demanding that the school be
opened on weekends so that they can get in? This isn't just the high
achievers (one of our kids has applied to Harvard) but some of these
kids are the bunch that are not involved in anything else. The hard to
get involved, hard to motivate kids.
And it is not just the robot build. We had kids building web pages,
designing T-Shirts (we won best T-Shirt design!), writing a research
paper, building an information booth.
With schools working so hard to integrate science into the curriculum,
but having to do it on a budget, this program is a perfect fit.
Again thanks to The BEST team and all the corporate sponsors. TI Rocks!
>Thanks for the plug, Lance!
>
>I'm one of the organizers for the local Dallas BEST competition and
noticed the inquiry. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any
questions about
>the event. What you saw on TV last weekend was from our practice
event, called "Mall Day", since we usually have this at one of the
local malls to get >a little more publicity. Kudos to Fox 4 News for
what must have been the longest news piece I've seen on BEST.
>
>Yes, our local "real" competition is this Saturday, October 21, at the
University of Texas - Dallas Activity Center building in Richardson.
It's open to >the public, and you're welcome to drop in anytime. We
should start the contest at 9 AM, and hope to finish before 4 PM.
Student teams from 24 local
>senior high, junior high, and a couple of middle schools are tasked to
design, build, test, and operate their robot to perform a set of given
tasks using >the provided R/C aircraft controls, servos, motors, and
other materials, common to all the teams. Points are scored depending
on the difficulty of the
>task performed. Adults help mentor the team, but the students are
expected to do the work and enjoy the rewards. Other "hubs"
>exist besides the Dallas BEST hub. For example, Collin County, Tarrant
County, and Denton County each have their own hub, and follow a similar
schedule, >but may be ahead or behind a week. Winning teams from all
the hubs in the Texas general area will move on to the regional
competition to be held at
>Texas Tech University in early December. This event is held in a large
part of the country, extending from New Mexico to Florida to
Pennsylvania to
>Kansas.
>
>Websites of interest: www.dallas-best.org , www.texasbest.org , and
www.bestinc.org
>
>Thanks for asking!
>
>Regards,
>Jon Spangler
>Dallas BEST Core Team
>972.344.8057
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