Meeting #3 - 10/31/07

Happy Halloween!

Here is the quick synopsis of our meeting this morning...

For some strange reason the team decided to torture their egg device some more, they kicked it, threw it, bumped it, set it, punted it, and finally the top came off and the eggs spilled out, and one broke. They put it all back together, we'll see how it does Saturday.

We made our first attempt at selecting a main challenge for the year. A challenge wasn't selected but the team did decide what they don't want to do. They don't want to do Challenge E (Switch - basically building a structure to see how much weight it will hold), and they don't want to do Challenge D (Chorific - this is the improv challenge for this season). That leaves three choices Challenge A, B, & C. We'll work more trying to select a challenge next week.

Time was rapidly running short so we quickly moved into an Instant Challenge. The challenge was called Halloween newscast. I gave the team the option of breaking into two groups and working on the challenge separately or working in one big group. They decided to split up. For the challenge they had to enact a Halloween newscast where the anchors, weatherperson, and sports person needed to have all of their stories relate to Halloween in some way. Each group had five minutes to prepare and 2 minutes and 30 seconds of "air time" to broadcast the result.

At long last the egg challenge is upon us. The event is this Saturday, November 3rd at 10:00am in the school parking lot. The mystery of what will happen to the eggs this year will finally be revealed! Hopefully your candy bar sales are going well. If you've sold all of your candy bars please bring your money to the egg event so we can get it to Denise who has been coordinating this fun fundraising effort. Even if you still have a few candy bars left you could still bring your money along and trust you will sell the ones you have remaining. If you haven't been able to sell all of yours you can also bring your unsold candy bars and the money from the bars you have sold.

See you at the egg event Saturday,

Mr. H.

p.s. Of course I took some pictures this morning, see the link to the photo album below.

ASDI

Meeting #2 - 10/24/07

Meeting #2 got underway this morning with the team attacking their egg challenge. The team quickly assembled a 3 egg contraption that was looking promising. After reviewing the rules and looking closer they realized it was bigger than was allowed. They started eying up one of the boxes I had brought along with instant challenge supplies so I swapped with them and they repacked their eggs. A couple of test journeys (they dropped the eggs) and they were satisfied with the results.

Next we moved onto an instant challenge. The challenge involved designing, prototyping, and presenting a way to evacuate astronauts from the top of a launch pad in the event of an emergency (you can read the full challenge here if you really are curious). Overall the team did a nice job on the challenge. You can check out the pictures of their solution at the link to the photo album below.

Since the team seems pretty satisfied with their egg protection device we will probably do another instant challenge next week and start trying to select our main challenge for the year.

Please remember to send along $25 if you haven't paid your DI dues yet.

Don't forget the egg drop is fast approaching (November 3rd). The final details and time will be communicated soon.

If you ever have any questions please let me know.

Until next week,

Mr. H

ASDI

Meeting #1 - 10/17/08

One meeting down, who knows how many more to go :-)

This morning we discussed the upcoming egg event (November 3rd - mark your calendar). The rules of this years challenge were revealed and speculation/planning began. Next week everyone has materials they are supposed to be bringing along so please check with your DI'er and pester them about gathering and bringing their supplies. With the egg event approaching so rapidly we will decide after next weeks meeting if we need to schedule an additional weekend meeting to finish preparations.

Speaking of meeting times I was planning on meeting Wednesday mornings every week. Please let me know if you have any major conflicts with that.

We also briefly discussed team names, many ideas were generated but nothing really stuck. Here are some examples:

-The Froot Loops
-All Star DI'ers (I've abbreviated this ASDI and named the blog this for now)
-Something to do with bananas (I can't remember what word they paired with banana)
-Oompa Loompas
-Sloop Dog the Avenger

We also did a brief instant challenge. The challenge was a take off on a classic puzzle called the farmer, the fox, the chicken, and the corn. The farmer has to cross a river in a row boat. There is only enough room in the row boat for him and one other item (the fox, the chicken, or the corn). If the farmer leaves the fox and chicken alone the fox will eat the chicken, if he leaves the chicken and the corn alone with chicken will eat the corn. How can the farmer get everything across the river? This is a fun little challenge, label some pieces of paper and see if you can figure it out. After a couple of small hints we finally figured it out.

Next week we will work a lot on our egg contraption but I will also bring an instant challenge along. We didn't have any serious discussions about a main challenge selection for the season, we probably won't get too deep into that until after the egg event.

I took a couple of pictures (see link below) of the newly formed team.

That is all for this week,

Mr. H

ASDI