The Holy Cows

2011 Navy Gold Coast Conference

2011-08-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

Today a handful of our team members went to present at the 2011 Navy Gold Coast Conference. It was a great way to make connections and spread the word of FIRST and STEM.

SAIC is one of of sponsors and were very excited that we were both at the same event. We love our sponsors.

Indiana Robotics Invitational

2011-07-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

We just returned for IRI at Lawrence High School North in Fishers Indiana, where we finished better than we had before. . . losing our final match in the semi-finals.

Congratulations to our mentor Jon for winning Mentor of the Year at IRI. We actually surprised him which is not an easy thing to do.

Our mentors Jon and Kiet participated in the mentor mini bot race where Jon finished second over all.

Indianapolis

2011-07-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

Today was our first day in Fishers Indiana we arrived last night for IRI (Indiana Robotics Invitational). We couldn't get to the pits to set up until 5pm so we hit up some glow in the dark indoor miniature golf.

We got our crate unpacked and got to work on our claw.

And We got some time on the practice field.

FIRST SVR Finals Round 1 2011 Logomotion

2011-04-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

FIRST SVR Finals Round 2 2011 Logomotion

2011-04-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

We did it at SVR!!

2011-04-03T20:27:00.001-07:00

Finally we won a regional championship!!!

Drive team (Jeremy, Ethan and Wyatt) and our awesome mentors Our winning team David and Bill the father and son who without their insight and passion for FIRST we would never be team 1538. Both giving unconditionally to our team, and all of team San Diego. You are loved and appreciated more than you know. . .the hours you are giving and not being with your amazing family speaks volumes to who you are and who your beautiful wives are, thank you also to Bee and Rebecca and sweet Makena too.

THE MAN!!! If you notice that "4 ton ape is no longer on his back"

Jon words cannot express how much we all appreciate everything you do in helping with our team You are an awesome mentor, thank you.

And of course we could not have won without our alliance of Team 254 The Cheesey Poofs and Team 751 Barn 2 Robotics. Thank you for choosing us to play with you Team 254 it was an honor to play with a team that has such an incredible winning record. 12 SVR wins congratulations . Team 751 thank you too for being part of our winning team cant wait to see you again in St. Louis.

FIRST - INVITE TO CHAMPIONSHIP 2011 - MORGAN FREEMAN

2011-04-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

What a great voice and support FIRST has from Morgan Freeman. Do you think he will really be in St. Louis? Are you going? We will be there and we can't wait!

San Diego Regional Mosaically - LOGO MOTION

2011-03-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

Click on the link and find yourself in the pictures. Have fun!

Mosaically - LOGO MOTION - San Diego 2011 by rebecca.berggren

San Diego Regional Chairman's Award Winner

2011-03-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

Being a member of The Holy Cows robotics team is much more than just building a robot and driving it around the competition field. It is a year round family that participates in community outreach year round, helping out other teams whenever they need it, hosting tournaments, mentoring other teams and of course writing award submissions. After putting many, many hours into this years San Diego Regional Chairman's Award submission all our efforts paid off. We humbly won this award again and joyfully celebrated all the hours it has taken for us to get here again this year. We congratulate all those teams who submitted submissions, presented and who have put in the same amount of effort that we did this year.

Some of our STEM girls

2011-03-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

The President names March 8 "International Women's Day." In his proclamation, Obama emphasized the importance of fostering female growth in science and tech fields: "My Administration is making unprecedented investments in education and is working to expand opportunities for women and girls in the STEM fields critical for growth in the 21st century economy."

The Holy Cows 2011 - Daisy Maize

2011-03-02T07:39:00.000-08:00

2011-02-28T21:28:00.000-08:00

http://sandiegoregional.com/?p=home

Team San Diego Pre-Ship Expo

2011-02-20T22:15:00.001-08:00

Build season has come to an end and we had our two day pre-ship expo at Madison High School this weekend. We were able to see lots of other great robot designs and got in some practice time.

We practiced placing tubes with uber tubes, what a fun twist to the game.
During some down time the team got creative with the tubes and played tube hackysack. . .

. . . and buried one of the team members.

Special visitor

2011-01-28T20:37:00.001-08:00

Several months ago we had the opportunity to Volunteer at the Druck Center. They hooked us up with a big Holy Cow fan. Yesterday he was able to come to the engineering lab and visit. He was the only person outside the team to see the 2011 robot and mini bot.

What a great for us to give back to someone who had such lose in their young life.

San Diego FTC Regional Tournament

2011-01-16T10:31:00.000-08:00

Saturday the team was able to take some time out from brainstorming to help out at the San Diego Regional FTC tournament at Madison High School.

Logomotion game

2011-01-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

Team San Diego Kickoff

2011-01-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning our team along with 34 other robotics teams from San Diego met at Kearny High School for FIRST robotics kickoff. After much anticipation the game "Logomotion" was announced. The game is similar to the 2007 game and includes a mini bot! We are all very excited to get brainstorming and building. Good Luck to all the other team and we will see you during competition.

e-Store Kick Off

2011-01-07T07:44:00.001-08:00

Inventor Of The Segway Has Another Bright Idea

Dean Kamen helps young engineers light the way to a cleaner future with a 7 watt light bulb.
In his quest for a fundraising item for FIRST® Robotics teams, inventor Dean Kamen tapped LED manufacturer Cree to produce an 450 lumen light bulb that draws just 7 watts. This people and planet healthy business model helps FIRST Robotics teams raise money for hands-on science and technology education, protects the environment and provides cost savings to consumers - all at the same time.

The FIRST®Green e-watt saver bulb is a state-of-the-art, 7-watt LED light bulb that replaces up to a conventional 60-watt household light bulb. The LED bulbs are the latest in lighting technology with an average life of 10,000 hours. They utilize only 10 percent of the energy of traditional bulbs, with no mercury, so they may be disposed of without harming the environment. In addition to “doing good” for the environment, supporters are also “doing well” for education and the future of our youth.

LED technology is the latest in residential and commercial lighting. Traditional incandescent bulbs are being phased out nationwide over the next few years in an effort to save energy. Compact florescent bulbs (CFL) have been available for a number of years but are generally considered inferior in terms of the light provided and contain mercury which makes disposable of the bulbs harmful for the environment.

FIRST®Green e-watt saver bulbs can be purchased in The Holy Cows e-store for only $19.99 with 100% of proceeds going to their robotics team expenses.

FIRST Robotics: The varsity sport for the mind, the FIRST Robotics competition combines the excitement of sports with the rigors of science and technology. Under strict rules, limited resources, and time limits, teams of 25 students or more are challenged to raise funds, design a team “brand,” hone teamwork skills, and build and program robots to perform prescribed tasks against a field of competitors. It’s as close to “real-world engineering” as a student can get. Students get to learn from professional engineers, build and compete with a robot of their own design, learn and use sophisticated software and hardware, compete and cooperate in alliances and tournaments, and qualify for over $14 million in college scholarships. Over 250,000 students and 90,000 adult Mentors and Volunteers from more than 50 countries participate annually.

The Holy Cows: The Holy Cows, FIRST Robotics Team 1538, are 2 time winners of the prestigious Regional Chairman’s Award and based out of High Tech High School in San Diego. They’ve rubbed elbows with the likes of Oprah, Bill Gates and Dean Kamen and were the center of a Wealth TV documentary about FIRST Robotics. Most importantly The Holy Cows, through FIRST Robotics, focus on preparing members for leadership roles in the community as well as work tirelessly year round to grow an appreciation for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering
and Math) in the community.

2010 - 2011 team photo

2011-01-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

1 on 1 workshop

2010-11-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we did a 1 on 1 workshop for a rookie team at Crawford High School. Jon and David gave the students and mentors a lot of information in the morning, then we helped them build a kit bot, tuff box and taught them a little bit of wiring.

Busy weekend for the Herd

2010-11-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

The team had a crazy busy, fun weekend. Saturday afternoon we went to Albert Einstein Academy to attend and help out with their Lantern Festival. We set up a booth and talked about FIRST, our team, we took and printed a bunch of pictures of families with Daisy and the kids also got a chance to drive our square bots they are so excited about robotics.

Daisy was able to walk in the lantern parade and was a big hit.On Sunday morning we hosted an FLL QT Tournament at High Tech High. The FLL kids were very excited to be competing and we had many rookie teams attend the event and they all did really well.

Finally, at the end of the day the Brain Busters came out on top as the champions of the event. Congratulations to the Brain Busters and all the teams that qualified for the Championship at Legoland in December.

Who we gonna call??? BRAIN BUSTERS!!

FLL team workshop at Legoland

2010-10-10T18:58:00.001-07:00

Today our team headed back to Legoland California to run an FLL workshop on programming. We had team from around San Diego and even ones that came from Palm Springs. It was a great day we did a 2 hour session in the morning and a two and a half hour session in the afternoon. Those kids really got the programming and the afternoon session finished the introduction and the intermediate booklet. The Holy Cows were impressed with these kids ability to quickly pick up the programming.

Chris is showing some girls from Palm Springs where to set their program.
Jo, Kristen and Stephen getting Daisy Bell ready to demo

Wyatt answering questions from a few curious FLL team members

Henry helping with some programming

Jeremy demonstrating some of the sensors to excited team members

Jenna Druck Foundation Family Day

2010-10-02T15:20:00.003-07:00

Today we got to go help out at Family Day at the Jenna Druck Foundation. It was a support day for mom's, dad's, teens and children who have lost a loved one close to them. We helped set up, serve food and even play games with the children. It was a great day for the Holy Cows to get out into our community.

Here Wyatt and Chris got to play football with the biggest 10 year old Holy Cows fan. He came to the pits last year at the San Diego Regional and met the team, he was so excited to be able to play football with them.

Travis and Chris worked on their hula hoop skills.

Hailey and Amber have it wired.

Here is Dr. Druck consoling some families who have lost their children recently.

Daisy Bell Shows up at Legoland

2010-09-25T17:37:00.000-07:00

Today a few members of our team showed up at the SDSA (San Diego Science Alliance) workshop for FLL leaders and teachers at Legoland Carlsbad. We had many team leaders, teachers and little visitors to the park stop by and ask questions about Daisy Bell, many got to see her kicking in action. The boys were asked a million questions about the robot to where they want to go to school and about their high school. They all left visiting us impressed with the kids knowledge of the robot and how they could think on their feet. Way to go team 1538!

WOW! That's Engineering

2010-08-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

Today we had the honor of helping The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at USD teaching 200 6th - 8th grader girls about engineering. It was a lot of fun meeting the girls and getting them excited about engineering.

When the girls first arrived in the classroom they were given an ice breaker challenge, they had a bunch of recycled materials and they were to create a track for a marble to travel down. The major twist in this challenge was to make the marble travel as slow as it could, it was also a great way to have the girls meet new friends.

The real engineering part came in thru the Light the Torch game. The girls had to get their runner to the torch using the least amount of spaces but they had to move it UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT. First they did it on a grid with only the runner and the torch after they understood it they flipped the board over and the grid had obstacles. (No left turn, bushes, a fire & fire truck, one way street and a bridge) This took them more thought but they got it pretty easy. After doing this activity we were able to explain to them about program and how it has a language of its own and how our robots communicate with our controls via programming.

The favorite part for the girls was hearing about our robots and learning about FIRST. They all had lots of questions and were excited to touch and play with the robots.

2010 First Robotic season wrap up

2010-05-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

The Holy Cows season began at the San Diego Regional where we made to to the semi finals with the help of teams 1388 and 668. The Holy Cows also won the Excellence in Engineering Award and for the second year in a row we were the recipients of the San Diego Regional Chairman's Award.
Friday morning of competition the stands were filled with over a hundred students from High Tech High School supporting Daisy Bell and the Holy Cows.

In March the team traveled to Salt Lake City for their very first Regional competition where we made it to the finals with our alliance teams 753 and 3241. We also earned another Excellence in Engineering Award and the Cooperation Award.

Finally, in April we traveled to Atlanta for the Championships along with over 500 teams from 30 countries competing in three levels of First.

The Holy Cows must express a deep and heart felt thank you to our mentors: David Berggren, Jon Jack and Bill Berggren our fearless mentors. . . Thank you!