Welcome to another wonderful week of FLL! :) I have some VERY important issues to address in this email so please make sure to read through each one.
1) Tournament Registration
2) Robot Design Executive Summary - RDES (Robot presentation requirement - NEW this year!)
3) Advancement Policy to move from Qualifying Tournament to Provincial Championships
4) Training Opportunities - don't miss out!
1) Tournament Registration
Tournament registration closes this Friday. If you have not registered for your qualifying tournament, please do so by the end of this week. They are on a first-come, first-served basis with some consideration given to geography. If you are new to FLL this year, please note that the registration you did in September was your "TEAM Registration". What we're talking about now is your "TOURNAMENT Registration" and this IS separate. Please go to this page on our site to find the tournaments available. On a side note, our Ottawa tournament is still looking for teams so if are interested in heading East to the beautiful city of Ottawa for field trip, please go ahead and sign up for that.
2) Robot Design Executive Summary (RDES)
The RDES is a pilot in which Ontario is participating. In a nutshell, it's something you need to create ahead of time to use during the Robot Design Judging session to provide a structured way for the judges to get to know what's going on with your robot. There is a document attached to this email outlining the full details of the RDES. Please read through it and make sure you are prepared. All tournaments in Ontario, including the Provincial Championships, will be following this new procedure for the Robot Design Judging process.
3) Advancement Policy
Teams often ask about how they can move on to the next stage. First of all, please keep in mind that the goal of FLL is not to "get to the next level" or "win an award", but to inspire children with respect to science and technology and to ensure they have fun throughout the process/experience. Each tournament they attend (whether it is a qualifier or the provincials) should be viewed as a celebration of their learning and a chance to learn from the other fantastic teams they meet.
Having said that, here is the information regarding advancement:
For the purposes of advancement to Provincial Championships, teams at tournaments will be assessed against the Champions' criteria and ranked accordingly against the other teams at the tournament. Each tournament is allocated a certain number of advancement "spots" based on the size of the tournament (ie. the more teams at a tournament, the more spots that tournament will be given at the Provincial Championships based on a standard percentage). So, if the tournament you're attending is sending three teams on to the Provincial Championships then your team would have to be one of the top 3 teams ranked according to the Champions' criteria. More information about this can be found on the FLL FAQ page located here: http://firstlegoleague.org/
4) Training Opportunities!
This week we have our last two training webinars for coaches and a fantastic symposium on Saturday. All training past, present, and future is FREE - all details can be found here.
Tuesday 7 p.m. Online: Core Values and Research Project
Wednesday, 7 p.m. Online: Intermediate Programming 102
Saturday, 9 a.m. Face-to-face: FIRST Robotics Symposium with many workshops planned.
By the way, if you've missed any of my email blasts or don't want to do a search for them in your inbox, they are all posted on my blog here.
Take care and have a great week!
Dave
Dave Ellis
FLL Operational Partner - Ontario, Canada
www.firstroboticscanada.org
