After School Meeting! 3:30 - 5pm

If we want feedback, I say we bring back a like and a wish yeah?

Also, is it feasible to hold an optional team bonding at central park this Friday?

/brb looking up design challenges

How's this?

Challenges
It's basically an egg drop challenge, with complications thrown in.
We can modify these or make them pre-training challenges.

Or...we can split people into groups. Give each group a really random item from the shop (like stuff we don't even know about) and have each group "reinvent" it (give it a new purpose, incorporate it into a larger invention.) They could present their ideas, and then everyone will vote which one they like best. (Aim is to have the most popular/creative invention whatever. It's supposed to be kind of silly.) After that, we can challenge them to put all their pieces together and incorporate them into a new kind of machine. (Pluses: It's really low tech and involves lots of creativity. Cons: ..Does it sound lame?)

Games
I personally really enjoy this game too, but I wonder if we'd want to save it for team bonding.http://www.ultimatecampresource.com/site/camp-activity/hot-chocolate-river.html


This is robotics-y:
People Machine
Divide group into even numbered teams (4-8 participants are ideal).

Advise teams to make themselves into a machine, with as many parts (gears, levers, etc.) as they can devise. The machine should have motion and sound, and include all team members.

Give the teams five minutes to prepare their machine. Once the time is up, the teams take turns presenting and guessing each other’s machine.

Tape Grab

I actually really like the random item and re-purposing it except I don't know if we have enough stuff that is put-together-able. Worth some thought though.

Also another idea:
Mr. Chew also mentioned a lecture/ lesson on how levers and pulleys work although its not so complicated, if we have enough rope/wire and some type of fulcrum. It'll be short but informative.

BTW: We need to plan a team bonding day YO.

Hmm I feel like we should keep to groups of like ~5 people because most people are more comfortable around less people. We could have groups rotate too just to mix things up. I like the Chocolate River idea, but maybe for like Monday's meeting when people are more comfortable with each other.

Here are some other ice breaker things:
True or False: Ask your participants to introduce themselves and make three or four statements about themselves, one of which is false. Now get the rest of the group to vote on which fact is false.

OMG I JUST REMEMBERED THIS ONE GAME WE PLAYED AT CAMP. It's called thunderdome. So everyone makes a circle and chants "thunderdome" over and over. Two brave souls will volunteer to go into the circle and someone will shout out a category (ie disney princesses) and the two people in the center have to duel it out and go back and forth yelling out things that fit into the category. First person to hesitate/repeat something that's already been said goes back into the circle and someone else volunteers to enter the dome and challenge the winner with a new category.

Idea for switching partners up: Have everyone count the number of letters in their first name. Now ask them to find someone who has the same number of letters. Those two are now partners. If a a person can't find someone let him/her use another name s/he is called by (i.e., a student named Matthew may use the name Matt and then look for someone with 4 letters instead of 7.) If they still can't find someone pair up with a person who has the closest number of letters.

Lol this might actually be good for learning everyone's names This is a particularly good game if you have a few new members joining a group. Based on the old favourite Duck, Duck, Goose, it helps everyone learn the children's names.

Age: 4+

This children sit around in a circle, facing each other. One child is chosen to be "it" first.

That child who is "it" stands up and walks around the outside of the circle tapping each child on the head and saying their name, with prompting if necessary. At some point he when he taps a child on the head he will say the name of the group instead (the class name, Scout, Brownie, Daisy etc) The chosen child must now jump up and chase the first child around the circle, trying to tag "it" before he can sit down in their place. If he succeeds, "it" has another go. If he fails, he takes over as "it".

I don't think the newbies liked the question games, like the True/False one your think of. Are we planning a meeting for games? just wondering... is there anything else the newbies wanna do? The games we have right now are fine, but the newbies were already asking if they ould get started on something else besides games. Icebreakers are necessary, but the games are meh... I mean, I dnt know what to do either, but I'm just wondering.

Also, we could split up the groups by which subgroup they might want to join, just as a way to split them up... sides if they end up in that subgroup, theyll know each other pretty well.

Oooh I like the Duck Duck Goose thing but we need to have a good penalty for if they falter/can't remember the name. (Requirement would be to name at least 5 people in a row so if they can't even get 5 down, that's where the penalty kicks in.)

as another quickie, I liked the thing where you line up according to birthdays without talking. it's not a getting to know you, but it fosters teamwork if given a time limit.

as for repurposing something, things wouldn't have to actually fit together, people would just have to come up with a design that used it as an integral part, if it couldn't be used as is. Perhaps they'd draw their machine out on paper. When it comes time to "put everything together" they wouldn't literally attach things together but envision more how things would go. It's more of a thinking activity rather than a building one.

We could also do subgroup introductions to the newbies and have them rotate around. The build subgroups would have to make do by grabbing random things from the shop to show them and I guess just go more in depth about what each group does? I don't know if we're prepared enough to do this yet though.

I don't think we're that prepared for it either, but I don't think playing games is the best thing to be spending our meeting times one... again, I'm just saying... I myself can set up like a little workshop, but it wouldn't be a very long one either, so you're right about whether we are ready or not.

I mean, teamwork and getting to know each other are the main things that we can actually do. When should we do the teamwork talk with Ward, the safety talk with Apperson/Ratto, and whatever else we have to talk about? Cuz we should get it done soon just for the sake of getting it out of the way, even though the machines aren't ready.

What are Vets doing again? Organizing?

We want to integrate newbies and vets to break the ice... If we could have some kind of robotics related group activity then that'd be a win-win

We could just have you guys do like 10 minute rotations and introductions to the subgroup. Or like a little activity for each subgroup. Engineering can have the robot running. (OH LA LA factor)

Robotics is brainstorm, design, prototype, build, test.
We can do activities based on brainstorming and design...not so much the other ones.

Brainstorming is a robotics-related group activity. What if we came up with really weird, crazy problems, and then had the group brainstorm how to solve them? Like a simulation of the beginning of build season...the crazy problems would hopefully put some fun into it. (or, we could just take the really old FRC challenges and brainstorm those.)

Hmm yeah that could work. I really want vets and newbies together though. Vets might be like wtfff... ahhaha

OHHHH I LIKE THAT IDEA!!!!! LETS TAKE AN OLD CHALLENGE!!!!!! LIKE A COUPLE YEARS BACK!!!!!

I really like that "reinventing" a random item game tho.
It doesn't necessarily have to be put-together-able like Alvin said, does it?
(And I know for sure that we have plenty of things that none of us know the uses of....)

Brainstorming FTC maybe? I could imagine getting a full list of ideas that our FTC team could later use in the actual building of the robot...

If we brainstorm for past games, wouldn't it be really cool to have everyone do it for the game of the team's founding year?
(And at the end, we can bring out the claw thing, and talk about how it worked!)

But I also see brainstorming for FTC being useful, especially since the game's out already...

OOOOH YEAHHH. WE CAN SHOW THE FTC CHALLENGE FOR THIS YEAR. KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE. But I feel like some people don't really have any basic knowledge of components so they wouldn't really know how to approach the challenge.

it'll generate ftc interest among the newbies too. in fact, don't even let on that it's an actual game...reveal it at the end with something like "If you enjoyed working on this and really want to see it through, then join FTC!" kinda thing.

I realize that just showing the animation would kill the above idea...but would we be able to show it in the first place? (considering that there's no wi-fi in the building)
If we can, by all means, show it.

it's okay if they don't know "basic components"
the point of brainstorming is that it's unrestricted...you're just trying to get the best ideas out. if they say "make the robot fly" then take it!

Borrow Ratto's room for video viewing?? We could just leave the video in fullscreen, and start it at the part where the instructions start, and cut off the name announcement thing...

I remember we did brainstorms for the Logomotion game just for brainstorm practice last year too... We could split up into small teams like last year, and have the groups guided by leads/vets because brainstorming for an actual game might be intimidating for some people with no experience in it...