Jan 19th part deux

The other big descision we took today was to move weekend meetings to Sunday at High Noon.  This seems to fit everyones schedule better.  

Jan 19 Meeting

Whew!  That was an all day marathon.  We met at 9:30 and had a good discussion of the creative problem solving process:

1. Brainstorm 
2. Critique
3. Select
4. Refine 
5. Execute

We will continue to improve our technique on each of these steps in future meetings.

We then heard the summary of a couple of story ideas, including: 

1. Lazy Genie in a Parallel Universe
2. Nutsville and Boltsburg
3. Snake Confusion in Austrailia 
4. Programming Day in Robotsville

Then we did some brainstorming about our vehicles after some selection we wound up with a list of must have items: 

• Wheels 
• Servos
• Power
• Motor
• Remote Control
• Electromagnet
• Brake
• Net
• Crane
• Controls

Then we did an excusion to a lumber yard.  We came away with 2 4'x4'sheets of 3/4"particle board and 10 5' lengths of 2x4.  A great set of starting materials all donated by an altruistic (or possibly sympathetic) lumber yard owner.

We started the process of putting these peices together and will continue next week.  

Jan 12th Meeting

Today we had a good warm-up and proceded to begin examining our Main task.   We treated the main task just like a complex Instant Challenge only allowed the parts of the machines to be played by humans.  8 Minutes is a short time!  Hopefully everyone was left with a sense of the large number of parts that this task will require.  Time management, story telling, characters are all important.  

We agreed that everyone should return next week with at least two story ideas, some drawings of machines and some ideas for materials for the machine.  

Next Monday there is no school and I have no work.  Noah suggested a Junkyard trip.  I think this would be a great idea.  I will find out where a fun, useful, raw material collection place might be and see if we can make it work.  

Open meeting of Jan 5th

Wow!  That was a pretty big group.  Hopefully next week we will split into teams and be able to work in a smaller group.  My comments for today.  There was a lot of positive energy.  This is good.  We talked early a little about the parts of the voice.  Some of you think I was joking about exercising your diaphragm...  I was not.  Excellent performance starts with being heard and being heard starts with your diaphragm.  Next after being heard is being understood, and we will continue to work on vocal exercises so that we can do just that.

We also made a pair of machines.  Both were very interesting, I was quite impressed with the stamina of the early parts.  We talked a little about how important big movements, big contrasts and variety of action, position and sound added interest to these machines.  I loved the precise performance of Marielle's machine and the assembly line Quality Control of Caulder's machine. 

I picked the 'Asteroid' Instant Challenge today because I wanted to see what kind of building we could do.  We need to do a lot more building!   It is very difficult to discuss, settle on an idea, and do quality construction in such a short time.  This is something that we will get lots better at.  Expect more construction challenges next week.  

Homework:  Please read the full instructions for the challenge.  If you have read them once, read them again.       

Welcome to Operation Cooperation

Welcome...  This is the first of many posts I hope, cataloging the progress of the Ace Academy Destination Imagination team for "Operation Cooperation"

I intend to include at least one post from each meeting to give our team some of my delayed feedback on how things are going.