Mentoring a Travis FLL Team

By Aarav, Ren, Nalin, Fernando, and Jai

This past Thursday, Iron Reign went to William B. Travis Middle School to help and mentor their First Lego League robotics team. Iron Reign first was established as an FLL team at Travis, and it was a full circle moment to go back and mentor the current team there. Primarily, we helped out with building challenges, starting the code for their robot, and their presentation.

Presentation wise, we taught the team how to make their presentation more formal, organized, and techniques to convey information in a better way. For example, we helped them reorganize some parts of the presentation so instead of big chunks of words, there were bullet points so it would be easier for the judges to understand. Another part of their presentation we helped with was specific wording. We helped them understand how to identify unclear or awkward parts and how to fix them. After mentoring them over specifically the information, we taught them how to clean up the presentation and make it neat, but also making it unique to themselves and their team. One specific part of their presentation that we helped out with was picking better pictures to capture the meaning of their slides. Another thing we helped them with was better formatting and color/font selections.

Our code team helped Travis’s code team mainly with the basic code for the drive train. Since most of the team was composed of 4th and 5th graders, we were able to teach them something new and complex for elementary schoolers: Circular Geometry. First, we derived a formula for the distance traveled by the robot per revolution. We calculated the circumference of the wheels, the diameter of the drive base, and used both pieces of data to create custom EV3 Mindstorms blocks that would make the robot drive forward precisely 10cm and turn (roughly) 90 degrees. We taught them how to apply the math and geometry they were learning in the classroom in a much more real-world setting by contextualizing physics in robot code.

Finally, the team had recently received their challenge map, so we helped them build and place the challenges on the map. Also, we helped them brainstorm ideas for attachments on the EV3. We helped them place the built challenges on their map as well as building. Brainstorming wise, we showed them videos on some ideas they can use for this year, and we gave them some ideas that may help form the first iteration of their robot. The build team also helped the team with organization and gave them tips and techniques to keep an organized space.

Near the end of their meeting, we had a quick presentation for them about FTC and all the changes between FLL and FTC. We talked about how FTC has more freedom in terms of parts available, and we talked about the complexity difference. We also showed the amazing outreach opportunities Iron Reign got to be a part of. The main purpose of the presentation was to spark interest in continuing FIRST robotics and moving onto FTC when they are older.

Overall, we had an amazing time helping out the FLL team at Travis. It was a fulfilling experience going back to where the team started and mentoring the current team. Thank you so much to Mr.Delgado, the team’s coach, and all the team members for being wonderful people. We can not wait to go back soon!