Tomorrow marks the start of our SIXTH season as Huntington County 4-H Robotics. Another exciting year none the least. We’ve had some wonderful sponsorships again this year from BAE Systems, NASA, Henline Towing, United Technologies, Indiana Workforce Development, National 4-H Council, United REMC Operation Round Up, PHD, Inc. and Huntington University. Thank you sponsors for making this possible to grow our students in our own community.
Kickoff will be held at Huntington University Science Building.
The agenda can be downloaded here if you can join us.
http://huntingtonrobotics.org/downloads/
Or you can watch it LIVE from home or your computer.
Saturday morning 10:00-noon EDT.
Watch it live on NASA TV http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
or via webcast on http://robotics.nasa.gov/
This came into my inbox today, an article written by a LEGO student, Henry Easley.
http://huntingtonfreepress.com/living/people/lego-robotics-competition-held-2.html
I was inspired for two reasons:
1. Kudos to Henry for taking the time to write up a nice article about his experience.
2. That our Huntington Community has some great people over at Huntington Free Press.com to allow students to express themselves. Take special note to the “editors note”.
Thanks to both Henry and Rick from Huntington Free Press
Chris Elston
For Press Release:
National 4-H Council awarded a $2,500 grant to the Huntington County 4-H robotics team. This funding will support the team as they work together throughout the year to learn how to build robots and participate in robotics competitions across the country.
To support 4-H’s expanded robotics programming, and in anticipation of the upcoming 2010 launch of 4-H’s comprehensive robotics curriculum, National 4-H Council raised grants that were awarded to forty-three 4-H Robotics Teams in twenty states nation-wide. These 4-H teams will participate in at least one FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), or FIRST LEGO League (FLL) event.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and National 4-H Council formed an alliance earlier this year to expand robotics clubs and programming among new youth across the nation. Through these grants, twenty-seven of the forty-three grants awarded are helping to establish brand new 4-H Robotics Teams in several states.
Huntington County 4-H Robotics Team #1501 will participate in the FIRST Kick-off event on Saturday, January 9, 2010, held locally at Huntington University Science Building. 4-H members and adult mentors will begin the planning and design stages for building this year’s robot to compete in the Boilermaker Regional, scheduled at Purdue University March 18-20.
About 4-H:
4-H is a community of six million young people across America learning leadership, citizenship, and life skills. National 4-H Council is the private sector, non-profit partner of National 4-H Headquarters (USDA). The 4-H programs are implemented by the 106 Land Grant Universities and the Cooperative Extension System through their 3,100 local Extension offices across the country. Learn more about 4-H at www.4-h.org
Quick post….
We had a great time today, though we don’t have the final “rankings” we did win 2nd place for Teamwork! We also ran three rounds with the robot.
Round #1, ranked 29th
Round #2, ranked 13th
Round #3, ranked 13th
All the above rounds where out of 48 teams total. Our highest match was round #3 at 285 points out of 400 possible. More to come later…
Huntington County 4-H Robotics and Crestview Middle School, Thunderbirds FIRST LEGO League finishes in the top five at Hammond, IN qualifier today. The team won a technical award for Best Robot Design. There are four main scoring categories: Teamwork, Technical Robot Presentation, Smart Move Project Presentation and Robot Performance. Teams are selected based on overall scoring in each of the four main categories of which Thunderbirds FLL 3669 scored highest in Technical Robot Presentation. Due to the nature of the competition core values, it is unknown the exact ranking of the top five in a qualifier other than they have succeed in all four categories above to advance onward. The State Finals will be held at the IPFW campus December 12th. Approximately 48 other teams out of about 150 teams total in the State of Indiana will complete for Championship title for Indiana. Only 1 to 2 teams move onward to Atlanta in April where the World Finals will crown the World Champion LEGO team for Smart Move.
More information about State Finals:
http://www.etcs.ipfw.edu/fll/
National FLL website:
http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/fll/default.aspx?id=970
Pictures from Dawn Chesterman’s Facebook Profile
