Week 26 was the final week before our Spring Break. These weeks are normally slow, but this year this week was action-packed. I got to represent our school at EDU-SXSW and I got to mentor an amazing Robotics Team, FRC 2789 TEXplosion, at the Alamo FIRST Robotics Competition Regional in San Antonio.
On Monday, I served as a mentor at the Slow Pitch presentation that featured several edtech start-ups. As a mentor, I gave feedback to new companies on how to improve their products and how to improve their marketing to and impact on the K-12 market. I was paired with an exciting company called DiscoverySTEAM. They created a really promising product called Ignite. Ignite is a web-based platform that sets up a communication portal between companies that are looking to hire high school project teams to complete projects that solve problems that the companies care about. If the students develop solutions that work, they can get paid by the companies. The product is FREE to schools because it’s paid for by companies that are using this portal to recruit American talent and to solve problems from unique perspectives. Teachers can collaborate with industry professionals to develop rubrics that align company problems to state and national curriculum standards. I really hope Manor New Tech will collaborate with DiscoverySTEAM in the future. We are always looking for ways to make projects more real for students. The Ignite platform would create great opportunities for our school to take PBL to the next level.
On Tuesday, I met with Mrs. Garner to brainstorm how to create accommodations that make learning and achievement accessible to all students in her classes. She is currently facilitating a cool block of art projects and activities that feature sculpture. I really love how she designed her sequence to gradually build sculpture techniques from basic to complex. On Wednesday, I observed her students completing a sculpture pre-launch activity. Students worked in pairs to create a paper sculpture featuring positive and negative space under one of the following constraints: cut only, fold only, and must cut AND fold. The technique and time constraints really got the students to be creative and think on their feet. This activity is a warm-up and conversation-starter for a project in which they will design pop-up books.
Thursday was Day 1 of the Alamo FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Regional in San Antonio. We met early at 5 am to load up district vehicles and travel to San Antonio for our tournament. Despite the tremendous lack of sleep suffered by many team members, the team was in surprisingly good spirits throughout the day. The pit crew had a long day of tweaking the robot to pass inspection. It took approximately 12 hours for the pit crew to get through the entire inspection check list. The scout crew learned how to match scout and practiced and honed that skill during the practice matches. At lunch, the team collaborated in a spirited sandwich factory that assembled 2 loaves worth of sandwiches for the team.
On Friday, Day 2 of the Alamo FRC Regional, we played our first 5 actual qualification matches and won all 5 and ended the day in 3rd place. This was a big FIRST in our team history. We had a rough build season that hit its ultimate low when our mill broke less than a week before Stop Build Day. The team scrambled to finish a robot using basic tools. We were lucky that FIRST Stronghold rewarded alliances that were tightly coordinated. We got to leverage our team’s strengths to win matches: knowledge of the rule book, tight collaboration with our alliance partners, solid strategy that leveraged our alliances’ strengths to win as many ranking and match points as possible, good communication from our spy human players, and excellent driving. Dr. Erickson said it best, “A mediocre robot with an excellent driver trumps a mediocre driver with an excellent robot.”
On Day 2, our scout team worked VERY Hard. The poor students’ eyes were red from studying and analyzing 50 qualification matches. Thanks to their hard work, we were able to analyze all their data and develop this pick list for Day 3. This pick list shows the capabilities of all the top robots after 50 qualification matches.
On Day 3, our team committed to an homage of our new drive coach, Mr. Fishman. We found fake glasses that looked like his in one of the booths on the pit floor on Day 2. We all wore those glasses, white team shirts, and plaid shirts to match Mr. Fishman’s “uniform”. Teams initially had a hard time finding us on Day 3 due to being out of uniform but it was so “worth it”. We continued our undefeated streak and ended the day 8-0, ranked 3. Then we had to replay one of our matches and got our first loss and ended at rank 11. We still ended up being the Alliance Captains of the 8th-seeded alliance that included FRC 5414, Pearadox, and FRC 2881, Lady Cans. We ended up facing a world class alliance in the Quarter Finals, the 1 Seed alliance: FRC 148 (Robowranglers), FRC 231 (High Voltage), and rookie team FRC 5726 (STEM ECHS). In Match 1, we revealed a new strategy. We played intense, clean defense – our calling card from previous years. We committed to this strategy by removing our mechanism (to prevent costly fouls) and subbing in Martin, our past defensive superstar driver, as driving coach. Our defense was so insane that we sent FRC 148 (Robowranglers) airborne (but earned NO FOULS). In Quarterfinal match 2, FRC 148 adjusted to our strategy by revealing a truly elite move, they shot from the outer works. It’s against the rules to play defense on robots in the outer works so we just watched their shooting check mate with awe. I was so stunned that I forgot to take pictures of it.
After our final match, our team met for our final tournament pep talk. This pep talk was truly emotional because our technical lead mentor, Dr. Erickson, told the team that this was his last tournament with us. We wept tears of deep joy and sadness because we’ve had a long glorious run with Dr. Erickson. We team bear hugged those tears away in true TEXplosion fashion and tradition. Words can not convey how truly proud I am of our team. They were positive, persistent, collaborative, humble, and scrappy throughout the tournament. They were truly AWESOME!!!
