Total Recall - Day 2

 We met this afternoon since we will not be able to meet on Monday night.  Monday night is Open House for Westlake High School.  David and Lauren ran the meeting and discussions. David made a small presentation to the group concerning team structure, student leadership and purpose of the meeting for the day.  

The group discussed any questions they had on the games rules and descriptions.  It was hard to keep the team focused on the task at hand.  Several times, someone would bring up a design feature or description of the robot.  Lots of discussions of rules interpretations and definitions.  Definitions of game pieces and the field have seemed hard to keep clear at this point. The group focused on a strategy and what we would attempt in each round along with a time line.  The formula for the scoring was discussed at length to explain the importance of each portion of it.  It became very clear using the scoring sheet what we felt was best for us to attempt in each round. 

Grant proposed a scoring strategy with a time line.  Discussions arose over how long it would take for each part of the round.  I volunteered to be the robot for demonstration purposes for Grant and the team.  The team designated landmarks in the classroom that represented the course. Grant gave me instructions to perform that represented actions of his scoring strategy.  The time was recorded for each me to complete each action.  After each action, discussion ensued about the time taken and how effective our robot would be in performing the action.  Students from last year team had good input on the time it would take based on observations of last year's robot in the contest.  Shelby recorded the actions and the predicted times for each action.  The team discussed how the score would change according to different scenarios as well as the order of the steps of the robot actions.  The scenario gave the team the ability to evaluate the game and contest in a visual way as well as comparing it to the time in the round.  The actions of the robot strategy were decided upon.  David and Lauren led the team in the Robot Will, Robot Might and Robot Will not activity.

Students were given the task to begin to work on designs that fit the strategy of the robot.  These designs should be done in small groups rather than as an individual.  The designs should also include the motors, servos, methods of performing each task, etc.  

David is going to write up the Robot Strategy the team decided upon and share it in Google Docs with the team.  David closed the meeting with having a small meeting with students who are interested in working in team leadership positions.  

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