Prepping for Wiley

By Janavi, Karina, Ethan, Charlotte, Kenna, Abhi, Austin, Tycho, and Evan

Task:

It was countdown time before the competition, we had to practice driving our robot, pack the MXP, and practice our presentation. So we decided to split up into smaller groups to accomplish more. Tycho, Charlotte, and Evan drove together to practice communicating quickly and effectively. They also played against our sister team so both teams could get practice with other robots in a competition-like setting before the real thing.

Inside, Ethan and I worked on putting the final touches on our team's journal. We hole-punched papers, decorated tabs, and double-checked the whole journal. Austin, Tycho, Abhi and Kenna were helping out our guest team with their phones and their robot(click here to read more about that!).

Every 30 minutes we all met up as a team in the tent and practiced our presentation. This really helped all of us work out any kinks or problems we had in our presentation. After each dry run we gave and received constructive criticism as well as new ideas, which really helped to improve our overall presentation.

Reflections

This method of splitting up into sub-teams really helped us organize and coordinate our time. In the past this has worked well for us, so applying this to our competition prep was a good move. By splitting up we could divide tasks more evenly and have a clear understanding of what we had to do. Another really beneficial thing we did were the practice runs every 30 minutes. By doing this we were able to practice our presentation and give each other feedback. Leaving 30 minutes between each run gave everybody time to review their slides and incorporate any new ideas into their presentation.