Week 2: September 12

We split our time between the project and the robotics at this meeting, beginning with the project. Each team member presented the information they had researched on the topics chosen at the Sept 6th meeting. It's clear this is a large topic and needs to be narrowed down so their research can be focussed on an area relevant to the final project, otherwise the team will spend a lot of research time on topics that are later discarded. Last year the team found that very frustrating, so we are attempting to reach agreement on a topic much earlier this season.

Several topics emerge as interesting possibilities: carbon nanotubes and energy solutions (creating or storing) are at the top of the list. The team agreed to use our new private blog as a way to communicate their ideas to each other until the next meeting. They did agree to abide by the standard brainstorming rules - keeping an open mind and not making negative remarks about other suggestions. We'll see how it works.

In the robotics, they showed the robots they had built at home. There were strong feelings about the merits and problems of each robot, and it seemed difficult for the kids to focus on individual design elements. Comments like "my robot's better than yours" abounded. The meeting ended without any agreement, so the discussion of the robot base will continue at the next meeting.