1 on 1 workshop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!