Robotics Carnival

The team has been meeting up every day this week to prepare for our Robotics Community Night. There is a lot to prepare for it. Just to get the plug out of the way from the beginning...

Robotics Community Night hosted by Team 3313 Mechatronics on Monday, April 30 from 7-9pm in the Jefferson High School gym in Alexandria, MN. Check out this article in the local newspaper, the Echo Press, for more information.

The team decided to basically change the entire format of the Community Night. Our big goal for the event was to show off all that we accomplished to our community while still making it fun and interactive. This coincides with our team mission statement, "build a robot, excite students about STEM education, and have fun". Returning members of the team enjoyed Community Night last year but it was really more like a banquet and very adult oriented. We are aiming for a more "all ages" crowd with our event this year.

The format we switched to is basically a science fair or school carnival. Team members will be spread out in the JHS gym at different exhibit stations. Each station will have a different theme that the students will talk about. The stations will also have an interactive aspect to them as well. For example, the field/competition station will talk about Rebound Rumble and have a half court shot contest similar to what Tyler did at the end of each game. Another example is the station with Murphy. Visitors will have the chance to drive the robot but will also learn about how we built it.

The team is really excited about the event and has been working hard to promote it. We have emailed countless community groups including: the City Council, School Board, sponsors, newspaper, tv, and radio. We also dropped off flyers at all of the places we have visited like schools and companies. We will continue our promotion by emailing schools tomorrow and writing announcements for our high school.

We want this event to be a fun learning experience for everyone that chooses to attend. If you're reading this and are from the Alexandria area, please plan to attend!

Lighting the Flame

This has been mentioned many times before but one of our team's main goals for the year was to expand the awareness and knowledge of our team in the community. We have been doing this in a variety of ways this year. We had a video game tournament, visited classrooms, visited local area clubs, presented to our sponsors, created many social network opportunities, and performed at a halftime show. We continued our efforts on Friday when we visited Discovery Middle School and Voyager Elementary School. Click "see more" below to read about how the day went.

Speaking Tour

It has a long time since a blog post update! Wow! Sorry about that. With the regional over, the team's activity and meetings have kind of slowed down or dwindled. That's ok. We have been pushing ahead with our Community Outreach agenda throughout April. We have presented two of the Alexandria elementary schools along with an area club.

 You really need to check out the video from our presentation at Woodland Elementary School. The excitement of the students was truly amazing. Seriously, stop reading for a minute and watch it. Awesome.

Two Robots Are Better Than One

After the incredible output of energy this past weekend at the 10,000 Lakes Regional, it would be easy for Team 3313 to take a few days off and just relax and recharge. That isn’t the 3313 way though. On Tuesday morning, the team is doing two different big presentations. We are presenting at Woodland Elementary School and, our big sponsor, the PMMC. To prepare for these big presentations, the team had a lot to get ready. 

Bryce and Jordan put all the parts we took from Beckham back on. As usual, the chains were the worst part. Bryce even upgraded Beckham with some red LEDs. It will be really exciting to have two very different robots driving around at the same time! To facilitate this, we updated the tiny netbook, put the code on it, and made a simple driver station for it. Molly did a good job making the driver station. Bydlon wired up the LEDs on Murphy so it glows blue again. 

Jenna and Bydlon made a presentation for Woodland. Bydlon arranged a van for the team to drive there with the robots. The team split up speaking duties. Jenna worked on a slide show presentation for the PMMC as well. Ryan was up to his usual interesting, funny antics. 

10,000 Lakes Regional Updates

We have been working hard all day updating all of our social media sites. There are blogs posts from each day of our competition, 3 new YouTube videos, lots and lots of new pictures on facebook, and many twitter posts.

Blog - Scroll down
YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/Team3313Mechatronics/videos
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/team3313 
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/groups/team3313/photos/

Also, FOX 9 did a story about the FRC Robotics competitions. They happened to take videos of OUR ROBOT that they showed during the story!!! So cool!!
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/education/students-compete-in-robot-rebound-rumble-apr-1-2012#.T3jm3mdrbCs.facebook