Team Poster Time
January 9, 2022
We had an extended winter break and did not meet since the festival FLL Explore Festival Event on December 11. Today was the first regular team session and we focused on filing the gaps on the team poster.
We encouraged the kids to brainstorm what goes on the poster and we all agreed it should look as follows:
Team name and number on the top (our poster board came with sticker letters that made that part easy)
Name of each team member and their roles
Describing the FIRST values: Discovery, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, Teamwork, and Fun
Describing our Model
For the team roles we had it roughly mapped out during one of the sessions, but this was an opportunity to formalize it and assign official titles:
Brandon is Chief Builder, and Team Co-Caption
Leon is Chief Coder, and Team Captain
Wesley is designated Director of Storyboarding. He brings in immense talent in developing and adding stories to the models. Think of adding Porch Pirates and the Cavalry during the Warehouse building process.
Alina is designated Artistic Director. While she has many scheduling conflicts and is not able to attend every session, she makes always sure there is a balance of color in the model, in particular adding some bright pink where required.
There is more work left on the poster. Brandon is working on cutting out planets that are added to the title, and the names/roles are still work in progress. We enjoyed one day focusing on a more generic task and recharging for the next building project.
Next Steps on our Agenda:
We brainstormed where we are heading for the rest of the season, here a couple of highlights we want to achieve as a team:
Team Poster: We will continue working on the team poster as we go along in the sessions.
Adding Space Cargo Center: As one can tell from the spinning planets and recurring storm troopers in the model, we are all big fans of space. We decided that Space must be incorporated into our model. We decided that the link between Cargo Connect and Space is quite simple: Space Cargo. As we venture more into space, the question of transportation must be addressed. We will incorporate a Space Cargo Port into the model.
Retire the Train: One thing in our model that consistently failed was the train. It was meant to drive around the houses on a recycling tour and pick up boxes. We could not get the train at a consistent speed, on track (literally), and pick up the boxes. So it was more or less decoration. We will eliminate it from the model.
Autonomous Recycling Bot: We are thinking of replacing the retired train with a line-follower-style autonomous recycling bot. For that, we plan to re-arrange the warehouse layout and have the recycling bot going back and forth between the Space Cargo Center, the Warehouse, and Distribution Center. We decided to put some thought into it and eventually come up with a prototype.