Tag Archives: robot

First Robotics Competition 2012

Dear Daughter’s Robotics Team was in a competition this Saturday, so we drove up to Centurylink Event Center in Seattle. The space contains 200,000 square feet and was hosting two simultaneous meets with about 50 teams each.  The teams were made up of high school students, mostly from Washington State though there were teams from Mexico and Turkey. Each team is given six weeks to create a robot to perform in a match.  This year the criteria was that each robot had to be able to shot baskets and balance on a teeter totter style bridge. The teams are given some basic supplies, but they have to add to those supplies and create the robots by themselves with the help of adult mentors.

I’m pleased to say that out of all those teams, my daughter’s team, the SOTA Bots won! It was pretty exciting 🙂

Info on the event center can be found here http://www.centurylinkfield.com/event-center-booking/

Info on the First Competition can be found here http://www.firstwa.org/

Learning About Ebooks

Today I took an interesting class in ebooks (the way of the future!) at the Puget Sound Educational Service District at 800 Oakesdale Avenue, Renton, WA 98057. It’s a nice office building with plenty of training and conference rooms. They do good work there.

No, I don’t think ebooks will completely take over, but what a great option. I once lifted my dear daughter’s backpack to discover it must have weighed 50 lbs! Putting all of her text books on an ebook reader would have brought that weight down to something much more reasonable. Another plus is that library patrons can read their library books from anywhere.

The website for the PSESD is http://psesd.org/