The Breakthrough Meeting: October 10

By the time we reached our tournament last year, I was able to look back at the previous 2 months and pinpoint the meeting where the tide turned -- on that day, the kids suddenly felt like they were making progress, the technical learning was all coming together, and the team personality took over from the individual personalities. The frustrations of the previous weeks seemed like they had all been so many bumps in the road, rather than overwhelming mountains in their path.

During the October 10 meeting this year, I felt that same sense of the tide turning. We sat down with the calendar to see how much time has elapsed, and how much time is left. The kids listed the things they still want to get done, and came up with a list that includes:

solve a couple more missions

increase consistency on the current missions

figure out how to sequence the missions and practice running them

decide which pairs will run the robot in competition

develop print-outs or spec sheets for the technical interview

improve their attachments and jigs

practice questions for their interviews

write the project script

develop visual aids and props

do some practice presentations for friends

practice practice practice

For the first time, they seemed to take the idea of strategic thinking to heart, and asked about the bonus points for scoring points in multiple missions. This gave them more incentive to continue working hard on improving ideas that are so far unreliable and inconsistent.

Two of the kids set off to think about sequencing the missions. They came up with a new idea to split one of the missions into two parts. They plan to bring the Pizza Molecules to base in one outing, and deliver them to their destination in a different, later outing, leaving the middle of the mat clear for the robot to traverse. The builder spent the hour working on attachments and alignment jigs - this is the first time the team is willing to consider alignment jigs and they are finding it particularly challenging. A third activity in the room saw another kid continuing to work with sensors to navigate his way down the mat.

By the end of the meeting, it didn't seem like they were much farther along, but they seemed to be more motivated. They have three missions which seem quite solid, as long as they can fine-tune the alignment jigs, attachments and programming to work together smoothly. Three others are being worked on, and a couple of kids are taking the Nanotip mission model to work on at home.

They made similar progress during the project half of the meeting, where they came up with a good idea for their skit that can involve the judges just a little, in a fun way. They will set it up as a break-out session at a conference, pulling their chairs up to the judges to include them as colleagues in this "meeting".

Just like last year at this time, I feel that they need to spend more time refining their innovation scientifically, but the reality is that they are sick of researching and they need to move into the creative side of things and start giving their presentation form. As they write the script, they may discover for themselves where they need to do additional research.