FLL World Class Team Blast #6 - Tournament Prep

Hello teams,

In this email:

1. Tournament Preparation
2. Sharing from around the world
3. FLL Ontario Blog

Tournament Preparation

You will be attending your qualifying tournament in the next couple of weeks and I wanted to review some items to remember and prepare.

1. Consent and release forms - For those of you who are new to FLL, FIRST requires a Consent and Release form to be signed by all coaches and participants at the event.  In the past these have been done via a paper version.  This year, FLL HQ has offered a new online method of doing this to cut down on the paper required for signing and postage for sending all the copies to HQ.  Please follow the instructions here to complete this process for your team PRIOR to your event.  Using the Team Roster  http://screencast.com/t/bigyCOnpJ.  For those parents who wish not to sign online, they can follow the procedures in this form to complete a paper copy of the consent and release form.
2. Teams MUST participate in all three areas of FLL (Robot Design, Core Values, AND the Research Project) in order to be eligible for Core Awards and advancement to the Provincial Championships
3. For information on how the Champions' Award and Advancement to Provincials works please refer to this FAQ page.
4. A REMINDER that teams must have a MAXIMUM of 10 children at the event.  Any team with more than 10 members at the event will be ineligible for awards and/or advancement to the provincials.
5. Make sure you refer to the Rubrics when preparing your team!
6. The Coaches' Manual (if you haven't already downloaded it is a great resource for the season and for preparing for an event in terms of what to expect)
7. If you're a rookie team (or even if you're NOT!) you may be feeling a little overwhelmed and under-prepared right now - fear not, EVERYONE feels under-prepared and there will be many teams at all events that are rookies and may have no missions or only one mission accomplished.  Don't let that stop you from attending 
8. If you've not visited it yet, check out the FLL World Class Resources page

Sharing from around the world

INSPIRING IDEA

FLL teams 52 and 59, from Mesa Robles Robotworks (in the LA region) have created a Core Values project.  They believe this is a great project and represents the essence of FIRST's Core Values.   Read about their idea:

Together we have developed a Facebook page and a YouTube page where 1 minute to 2 minute videos on Core Values can be posted.  The Facebook page can be found  https://www.facebook.com/INSPIRECoreValues  The name of the project is INSPIRE Core Values and we are asking all FIRST teams to post a video.  Instructions have been posted in the About section of our Facebook page.   

EV3 LESSONS

This team from Pittsburgh, PA have created a website to share EV3 lessons.  Check it out!  http://www.ev3lessons.com/other.html

FLL Ontario Blog

If you feel you've missed an important email from me, know that you can always check out the FLL Ontario Blog which archives all the emails sent (note: with the exception of the tournament registration emails because those were sent ONLY to the Head Coach listed for the team to avoid duplicate registrations/confusion in the system).