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I am starting a FIRST Lego League team at my daughters school this year. If you haven't heard about it, FIRST is an organization created by Dean Kamen (the Segway guy) to get kids interested in math, science, and engineering. Since sporting competitions are what get peoples attention, he created a tournament style format where kids (with the help of mentors) create robots to accomplish a series of tasks. This gives kids real world experience in engineering principals.
There are robotics programs for nearly every age group. I am concentrating my efforts on the 9-14 year old group. They use Lego Mindstorm kits to complete tasks on a table. This is a growing sport and one that is very worthwhile. I have interviewed to become a partner with FIRST. I will be charged with promoting the Lego League in Oklahoma and starting a tournament.
The tournament consists of three parts. The robotics competition, a presenation on how you developed your robot, and another presentation based on the theme of the competition.
FIRST relies on volunteers to help with the teams and tournaments. I know alot of you out there are more literary than engineer types. That's ok. The engineering of the robot is only a part of the competition. I would encourage you, especially if you have kids in this age group, to look into this.
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Sounds pretty cool! I'm not sure that I'd call it a sport, though. Which of course begs the question of what "sport" is. I'm too tired to think about it right now, but I'll be doing so.
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I was part of an after-school LEGO robotics class when I was in 5th grade (12 years ago). I remember for our final project we built a miniature automated grocery store conveyor belt with a special shopping cart that drove the groceries out to the car and dumped them in the back. Our little lego shopping cart was so cute! It wasn't very advanced but we all went slightly crazy playing with the infrared light thingies and trying to get the timing just right.
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Noe, If they have the spelling bee and National Scrabble Championship on ESPN, I think they can call this a sport. I get what you mean though. Do you have to be an athlete to play a sport? If so, bowling is out.
Shanna, That's pretty cool. What did you use to make the conveyor belt move? The Mindstorm kit comes with a programmable "brick" and from it, you can run motor, light and touch sensor, etc. The kids learn to build a prototype, program tasks, test and rebuild. It's pretty exciting to see how much engineering they can do at 9.
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My boss' kids were all on FIRST teams, and he was always helping them and taking time off to go to tourney's (they are all in college now). But it was always fun to hear about how they were doing.
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I did this last year and the year before; it was a lot of fun. Definitely learned a lot about scientific method.
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As a student. My team actually considered doing it again this year, but it's not really meant for highschoolers ,and one of our members would have been too old.
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I don't know about brick but if I remember right, we used a motor and light sensors. I think the light sensors were the closest we came to motion sensors and I don't remember touch being an option. I think we had it set up so the conveyor belt would start when items (small legos bits) were placed on a platform and interrupted the light beam. Then we had the motor programmed to run for a certain period of time once it was triggered.
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Yea. I'm interested in doing that. Unfortunately, my school doesn't have a team at this time. My friend and I are thinking of starting one though, hopefully that'll work out Posts: 58 | Registered: Dec 2005
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If you do, let me know. NASA has a grant setup to help finance first year teams. I believe they will send you $6000. About the cost needed for building a robot.
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I'm too old to participate, and too young to mentor, but man I wish I could. That sounds like a lot of fun. And that is awesome that NASA is willing to give out money for this type of competition.
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Which of course begs the question of what "sport" is.
I'm almost positive you and I have had such a discussion on HR before. IIRC, we both agreed that a true sport must a) be an athletic activity and b) inherently competitive.
These rules exclude activities such as chess and scrabble because they aren't athletic activities, and gymnastics and diving because they aren't inherently competitive.
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vonk, You are definitely not too young to mentor. Do you still live downtown? The competition for the high school groups in Houston is held at George R. Brown.
NASA sets apart 3 million a year to support FIRST teams. Other companies have started donating more to FIRST teams, GM gives 1 million a year. It's really a growing "sport" and I think it's a great way to get kids into engineering.
I hear there is a movement to get robotics classified as a varsity "sport" in many schools. I think this is also a worthwhile task.
mph, While I don't necessarily disagree with you, I am going to play devil's advocate.
1. If chess, scrabble, diving, gymnastics, etc. are not sports, what word would be used to describe them.
2. The Special Olympics holds races but doesn't necessarily keep score. Does that mean these people are not competing in a sport?
3. If two teams show up to play a baseball game and one team beats the other by a score of 22-0, doesn't that show that the losing team was not "competitive" and therefore make that game ineligible to be considered a sport?
I'm having some lighthearted fun here, don't take it as a personal attack. I hate to put that disclaimer in but lately my posts have come across differently than I expected them to.
Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Which of course begs the question of what "sport" is.
I'm almost positive you and I have had such a discussion on HR before. IIRC, we both agreed that a true sport must a) be an athletic activity and b) inherently competitive.
These rules exclude activities such as chess and scrabble because they aren't athletic activities, and gymnastics and diving because they aren't inherently competitive.
You're right! Now that you mention it, we have talked about it. Man, I can't believe I'd forgotten about that. I wonder if that thread's still around?
[Edit--I'm not finding it. This is as close as I could come. This thread touches on the subject briefly, and is an interesting read, but that's it either.]
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Brojak -- off the cuff, here are my initial responses to your questions, given in the same spirit that the questions were asked.
quote:1. If chess, scrabble, diving, gymnastics, etc. are not sports, what word would be used to describe them.
Chess and scrabble are competitive games.
I could draw a Venn diagram showing sports as intersection of competitive games and athletic activities. While all sports are competitive games, not all competitive games are sports.
I would call diving and gymnastics presentations or performances, which is a category that also includes ballroom dancing, ballet, opera, and jazz. While we think of diving and gymnastics as being competitive, it isn't inherently any more competitive than ballet, which could be turned into a competition the exact same way -- by having people judge the performance and then compare the judge's scores to determine the outcome.
quote:2. The Special Olympics holds races but doesn't necessarily keep score. Does that mean these people are not competing in a sport?
If nobody is trying to get to the finish line before the others, it's not really a race, now is it? And if they are trying to beat the others, then it is competitive.
Just because the results of a competition aren't written down doesn't mean no competition took place.
quote:3. If two teams show up to play a baseball game and one team beats the other by a score of 22-0, doesn't that show that the losing team was not "competitive" and therefore make that game ineligible to be considered a sport?
The game of basketball is inherently competitive, even if there might not be much competition in a specific game.
posted
Good replies. That is very similar to how I feel. I'm glad the spelling bee and high school scrabble championship are on ESPN, but that doesn't make them sports.
How do you feel about robotics as a high school letter?
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posted
I have no problems with any school activity having a school letter. I myself got one for both band and academics.
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We had a great time building and programming the robot. We had great parent support and the kids really worked hard. Then, one week prior to the competition, I had four kids drop out. Including both of my programmers.
My daughter stepped up and learned the software and programmed the robot over one weekend. She put in about 12 hours of work.
Finally, we go to the competition. We make it to the top eight teams (out of 40) in the robotics portion of the competition. The kids and parents are extremely excited. Then, my daughter picks up the robot the wrong way in the competition and it falls apart. Since only two can be at the table at a time and she couldn't fix the bot, I have her switch out with our lead builder. He quickly rebuilds the robot and runs a couple of programs to try to scratch out some points. We lose. My daughter is crying on her mother's shoulder. My wife makes her go and shake the other teams hand anyway.
After, I try to explain "catastrophic failure" to the kids. Then, the scores are posted. Our perfect run would only yield 300 points, the other team scored 305. This helps the kids accept that they did all they can do and if we had more time (We started in mid-October and not the beginning of September) we may have had a better chance.
We did impress the judges and were one of the finalists for rookie team. Then they announced the finalists for the "Against All Odds" trophy. We were one of those teams. Then they started reading about what the team had overcome and how they were so competitive. I though, that's our story. Our kids won the trophy. See the picture here.
As some of you may know, we have had problems with my daughter and her lack of confidence for quite some time. I think we really saw her break out of her shell during this competition. When the kids gave their presentation to the judges, the parents had to leave the room. They gave their five minute presentation and then the judges asked them questions for another five minutes. My daughter fielded most of the questions. The other kids turned to her and said, "you are the leader, you answer them." No one had named a team captain, this was just what the kids decided.
I'm proud of each and every kid on the team, and for the most part, it was an enjoyable experience, but I could not be more proud of my daughter.
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Porter covered my thoughts on sports/skills/activities/games. We've had that discussion, but it may not have been here.
Either way, this is a very cool program.
And brojack, I'm glad that you amended your earlier statement. You're right -- showing something on ESPN does not make it a sport, just like showing something on MTV doesn't make it music.
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Chess is a game. There's absolutely no physical component.
That doesn't mean you don't have to be a competitor to be good at chess; just means it's not a sport.
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If you think that chess has no physical component, then you know nothing about serious competitive chess. It taxes your body as much as it does your mind. One of the reasons that Karpov continuously lost to Kasparov is because he wasn't strong enough to deal with the exhaustion. Great chess players now have realized that they have to exercise their body constantly to stay in top physical shape, or they can't endure the games.
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I remember that old conversation about games vs. sports. ( I think this is the first old post reference I've ever recognized *proud*).
As a [Edit]highschool[/Edit]diver I agree that it is less a sport and more a competitive performance. Our coach reminds us to not look like an idiot when you get on the board because judges are subjective, and at least subconsciously they'll score you lower if you look like a clutz before your dive.
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quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: If you think that chess has no physical component, then you know nothing about serious competitive chess. It taxes your body as much as it does your mind. One of the reasons that Karpov continuously lost to Kasparov is because he wasn't strong enough to deal with the exhaustion. Great chess players now have realized that they have to exercise their body constantly to stay in top physical shape, or they can't endure the games.
But this is true for almost any mentally-tiring activity. If you're physically fit you'll be able to stay focused longer, whether you're playing chess, programming, writing journal articles, etc.
One of my old philosophy professors used to say that his finals tested not only our minds, but our hands & arms, since you would literally have to write various in-class essays for four hours straight. If your arm or hand cramped up, you'd be in major trouble. One year he took pity on his Philosophy of Mind class (one of the more difficult & nuanced philosophical subjects) and let them use the computer lab to type up their essays. It still took the quickest of them five hours to finish.
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Yes, chess boxing is quite interesting. Some of them are actually decent chess players, in their own right. I think the last world championship had an 1850 go against a 2000.
I've been thinking for a while about getting into robotics (as a hobby, of course). Specifically, the programming end of it. Do you have any recommendations for a low- to medium-end kit that's programmable and fairly modular?
I've been googling, but I'm not seeing anything that looks exactly like what I'd like. Any online resources you like would be cool, too. Thanks.
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The Lego Mindstorm kit would be a good kit to start with. You can make just about anything you want with it and it has some great sensors. The programming that is standard with it is pretty simple and rudimentary, but I guess a former Hatracker wrote a book about programming the NXT.
The NXT kit costs $285 at Toys R Us and the educational kit is $325. The educational kit has a lot more parts (non robotic) in it and it gives you more opportunities to build some really cool stuff.
Check out You Tube for some really cool videos of things people have built.
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