Think+Tank+Week+8+(Yelena)

This is our team's Picasa album - @https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=115947008938138738604&target=ALBUM&id=6076903190561679633&authkey=Gv1sRgCMTpyvqgkdzcqgE&feat=email

If you have pictures from our meetings, please upload them here. It would be very helpful both for the team (in preparing the Show Me! poster) and for Wake Robotics (documentation, fund-raising, public relations, etc).



Inventing
Just like last time, we started the meeting with a short inventions challenge. This time the objects were - empty plastic water bottles and old CD disks. I also specified that each invention had to solve an actual problem. The inventions could use one of the objects or all of them. Duct-tape and super glue were allowed (well, imaginary, as in “if we had duct-tape, we could connect these bottles just so…) 

The kids came up with so many great ideas! There were ideas for making art pieces, science experiment props, clocks, kitchen utensils, communication devices, and, of course, toys.



Logo
Good news - we finally have a team logo! But getting there wasn’t easy. First, Louis showed us his re-worked logos. We talked about their pluses (colorful, expresses many concepts, funny) and minuses (lots of small elements, hard to draw on a button). We then looked at Mark Daniel’s and Teja’s logos from last week. Alex and Daniil didn’t bring new sketches and Mark David wasn’t at the meeting.  With just three meetings left until the Expo (really? just three? time sure flies!) we could no longer delay on the logo even though Mark David wasn’t there. Once again, I tried to get them to discuss their ideas and find a compromise, but that didn’t work. I was a bit lost as to how to proceed; somehow voting didn’t feel right after all the work kids put into their work.

Thankfully, the team’s co-coach, Kelli, suggested a brilliant plan - ask kids to draw one element from their logos that they would most like to see in the team logo. So I gave each team member a small card and a pencil and explained the task. They had 5 minutes to work on it, but really they took a lot less time.

When I collected the 5 cards, 4 of them looked virtually identical - a LEGO-like block with the letters AIB in it (Mark David’s sketch from the previous two weeks was very similar). Louis had an ice-cream bowl which looked to us like a pair of hands holding the brick with the letters. So I combined these ideas into one sketch. Then each child had a chance to add just 1 thing to a logo and Teja added three small apples on top of the letters.



<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">As you can see, this is a rough sketch. Each child is to draw this logo and make it as colorful as he or she would like without adding or removing elements from it. Hopefully next time we’ll finalize the colors and the font for the letters.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; vertical-align: baseline;">Challenge - Building
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">__Trampoline Team:__ <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">It looks like they are done! The trampoline has been cleaned up of extra pieces. This led to an unexpected discovery - the pulley system did not actually do anything. It didn’t move any part of the trampoline. So it was removed. Instead, the motor now connects directly to the cooling fan.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Once that was done, Teja and Louis built the entire playground scene around the trampoline, complete with bushes (and there’s a funny story as to why some of them are bright green and some aren’t, but we’ll wait for them to explain it to the rest of us at the next meeting).

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">They also got to show their completed assembly to some of the Wake Robotics coaches and young adult mentors (YAMs) and explained about their ideas. This was a good practice for the interview part of the Expo! Great job!

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">__Library Bookbot Team:__

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Much progress has been done on bookbot. It now has an optical sensor and moves fairly well without tipping over. This is an ambitious project and there are still a few things to figure out. Besides, the library team had some slow-downs because of some communication issues that are being sorted out. Mark Daniel and Alex are taking the lead on bookbot design/assembly while Daniil was given the task of building the library itself. So far this is what he came up with: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s much work to be done for the library to come together. Since the trampoline team is done, we might get them to help their teammates with the library. The library will need to be build directly on the big board (and the team will need to position the trampoline scene on the big board as well).

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; vertical-align: baseline;">Homework
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">All - work with the team logo - come up with a coloring scheme and figure out the lettering (font, size, capital or small letters). Do not add or remove elements!

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trampoline group - how does trampoline help with learning? (Alex, Mark Daniel and Daniil might also find this interesting)

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">Library group - consider additional meeting on Saturday this week to work on the bookbot and the library