Alexander City FLL season 2011-2012 Overview

Spring 2011

Ms Barrett enlisted a group of around 15 students from Radney’s gifted program to be our professional advisors. We took them over to the CACC Physics lab one Friday morning last spring and introduced them to the Mindstorm Lego Robot Kit. We then let them examine them for two hours before offering us their opinion about whether or not we should try to form a First Lego League (FLL) at Radney.

Their consensus was that they felt further study was necessary, so loaned them seven Mindstorm Robot Kits to take back to Radney for further examination. Eventually, they made the decision, unanimously, that it might be a viable program.

Late Spring 2011

I was describing these events in a chance encounter with Mark Tuggle at his office and mentioned to him that the one weak link in this idea was being able to find adults able to coach the teams, since most people work, or have either full or hectic schedules and would be unable to commit to two afternoon sessions twice a week for twelve weeks . I also told him I had discussed the possibility of using CACC Physics students as coaches with the physics students and they agreed that students would be willing to do it for a stipend of $1000 each semester. But, I had been unable to find any way to raise the $8000 needed for the estimated four students we would need to be coaches. That is when he said, without hesitation, “That’s it? I can get you that, let’s do it.” And so we did.

Fall 2011

We handed out a job description and an application to all the physics students, and by the end of the first week we had 4 coaches.

Twenty-six students from Stephens and Radney Elementary signed up at our first meeting, but we eventually settled with 4 teams of 6 students each. We prepared long and hard, attended the Central Alabama Qualifier in Birmingham on Dec. 3, and one of our teams earned third place, which meant that they could compete in the state championship in Huntsville two weeks later. By the way, we were the only school to send more than one team to the qualifier to Birmingham. The only reason we were able to do that is because we had the 4 physics student coaches, thanks to Mark Tuggle.

In Huntsville, we actually did pretty well in the three team judging activities held in the morning, Project, Robot Design, and Core Values, but we were simply outperformed in the afternoon robot competition by other teams who had several years of experience. Next year, our goal is to send more than one team to the state championship which means we need to get at least two teams to score in the top four ranking at the qualifier.

Dadeville Outreach.

Mr. Blue started a robot program at Dadeville Elementary this fall, so we also loaded up 3 computers and 5 robots into the van one afternoon and spent 2 hours with them trading ideas and information. Hopefully, we can get at least one FLL team from Dadeville next year.

Plans for this spring.

We plan to hold a Friday Lego training workshop for teachers involved in the new science program at Radney and Alex City Middle School.

We plan to hold another session or two with the students and teachers from Dadeville and hopefully Horseshoe Bend and Coosa Central as well to share with them what we learned during our first FLL season.

We have also arranged to hold our spring Mindstorm program for Stephen’s Elementary during school hours so that more students can be involved. We have Kim Smith, principal at Stephens, to thank for that. She has been very supportive for our program.

If all goes as planned, we might even hold our own competition using our Field Setups for the Food Factor this spring to give some of our new beginners a taste of the experience of the competition.

Plans for Fall 2012

If we can get a couple of more schools involved, our goal is to have enough teams locally that we will be able to hold a FLL Qualifier meet here at CACC next fall.