Meeting #2 - 10/25/09

Today it was all about the eggs. The team designed, built, and tested a prototype eggevator and we gave it a ride down an eggevator cable from about 12 feet high. After two drops we did have two broken eggs (no yolking). Next week the team plans to build their final eggevator.

The team then moved on to an Instant Challenge. In this IC the team had to come up with a non-verbal way to communicate and then use their new form of communication to communicate the location of 9 different Halloween graphics on a grid. The team managed to use their non-verbal communication to successfully locate all nine images.

I almost forgot the team also discussed their team name again.  They decided to take their favorite name from last meeting and convert it into a palindrome, so the new name is ZOKAYWEDEWYAKOZ, try saying that five times fast!

We had just a few minutes left so we took one quick look at the main challenges and discussed which ones we might like to do. Challenge E "Breaking DI News" seems to be the least likely to be chosen at this point.

You can check out new pictures in the photo album by clicking on the pictures in the upper right hand corner of the blog.

Please also check out the important dates post and let me know if you have any conflicts with any upcoming meeting dates.

Thats all for this week,

Mr. H.

Important Team 14 Dates

Sunday 11/1/09 11am-1pm
Team Meeting @ KI

Saturday 11/7/09 10am-Noon
Egg Event, Location To Be Announced

Sunday 11/8/09 4pm-6pm
Team Meeting @ KI

Saturday 11/14/09 4pm-6pm
Team Meeting @ KI

Saturday 11/21/09 4:30pm-6pm
Team Meeting @ KI

Saturday and Sunday 11/28 & 11/29
No Team Meeting - Thanksgiving Weekend


Saturday 1/16/10 9am-10:30am or 10:45am-12:15pm
Instant Challenge Workshop - Valley View Elementary

Saturday 2/6/10 9am-10:30am or 10:45am-12:15pm
Instant Challenge Workshop - Valley View Elementary

Saturday 2/27/10 Time To Be Announced
Sneak Peek - St. Bernard Multi-Purpose Room

Saturday 3/20/10 All Day
Regional Tournament - Ashwaubenon High School

Sunday 3/28/10 Time To Be Announced
End of Year Celebration - St. Bernard Gym

Meeting #1 - 10/18/09

After many failed attempts we finally scheduled and held our first meeting. Unfortunately Bahron was not able to make it to the meeting, he has the flu!

We spent some time meeting each other and discussing possible team names, there were several interesting suggestions. The one that seemed most popular was created by all team members randomly picking a letter and then jamming them together into a word, the result was ZOKAYWED.

Next the team dove in to brainstorming ideas for the egg event. They have several good ideas already and they came up with this list of items, the initials in parenthesis are who is bringing that item to the next meeting so we can start building and testing.

• Cotton Balls (KS)
• Duct Tape (TH)
• Egg Cartons (Everyone, just bring in any you empty between now and next meeting)
• Boxes (KH)
• Parachutes (plastic bags) (LL, JR, MW)
• Diapers (MH)
• Bubble Wrap (KH)
• Seran Wrap (MW)
• Eggs (CL)
• Packing Peanuts (KH)
• Marshmallows (MH, LL)

Next week the team will start assembling some of these random items into our eggevator cab.

Finally we had an instant challenge. For their instant challenge they had a tower of blocks on a cardboard platform, they had to move the tower to another platform about 20 feet away without using their hands or arms to move the blocks. This was a great first instant challenge, it gave us a great opportunity to review some of the key things to do in an instant challenge. I'll spare you the details but it was a good way to get the teams instant challenge skills back in shape.

Before we knew it our hour and a half was over. It was a great first meeting and the time went really fast. Our tentative plan is to keep having meetings on Sundays, we'll juggle things around Packer games when necessary.

Be sure to check out the photo album for photos of the team at work. Just click on one of the photos in the slideshow on the upper right hand side of the blog to see the entire photo album. I'll try to update this every week.

That's all for this week,

Mr. H