Conf-call-09Dec2009

Attending: Anita McAnear (ISTE), Laurie Thornley (ISTE), Vincent Barnet (ISTE), Steve Rainwater (SIGCT), Bruce Linton (US FIRST), Karen Ortiz (CO), Joe Kmoch (SIGCT)
 * Robotics planning conference call - 12/9/2009**

Monday,7:30am - 10:30am Content portion could include The students would lead a "march" from the Breakfast Forum room to the exciting Robotics Playground set up outside of the exhibit area
 * SIGCT Breakfast Forum plans**
 * someone speaking about robotics in education in general (getting kids involved, why, what's the value); this could be someone from USFIRST (in Joe's opinion, the focus should be not USFIRST but on getting kids involved with robotics including the IT, engineering and team business aspects where examples from US FIRST are used)
 * a teacher (Jasinowski?) speaking briefly about his involvement from the teacher/educator viewpoint - why is this useful, important and why it's fun, etc
 * two (or more?) students who would talk about their involvement (in Joe's opinion, make sure that ethnicity and gender are considered in choosing the students - perhaps at least one younger student and one senior)

We will have a space outside of the main exhibit hall entrance. US FIRST has 4 competitions FIRST Competitions Demonstrations: Monday, 9am - 4pm? (not decided) Tuesday - not decided, probably will depend on availability of student teams
 * Robotics demonstration area**


 * FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) || 4 FRC Teams || 54' x 22' + safety area around + 8' table for each team ||
 * FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) || 4 FTC Teams || 12' x 12' + 8' table for each team ||
 * FIRST Lego League (FLL) || 4 FLL Teams || 4' x 8' + 8' table for each with their projects ||
 * Jr FIRST Lego League (JFLL || 4 JFLL Teams || 8' table for each team with their projects ||
 * If the demonstrations are over 2 or 3 days, then either teams will take their robots and projects with them or we need to find a lockup (inside exhibit hall?)
 * Anita will forward CAD drawing to Bruce.
 * Bruce and his USFIRST team will design an area that will work and then finalize plans with Anita and her staff.
 * Someone needs to lead a team to plan the actual activities (Perhaps these can come out of discussions with the students and their mentors)
 * Bruce will engage Dawn Lutz to begin searching for teams in the greater Denver area. Karen will also work on this.


 * Other considerations**
 * demonstration area would be very student-focused - students will demonstrate and also talk with adults about their activities; perhaps even help teachers design and/or control a Lego robot?
 * have SIGCT posters in a nearby area for people to also view
 * lots of advertising before and during the conference
 * if this is more than about 2 hours, work up an agenda for the time and then post it so that if people want to see a particular activity, they'll know what time to come by; also publish this agenda in the daily ISTE 2010 newsletter at the conference
 * Karen will inquire at local university schools of education to see if there are other robotics activities (maybe even PLTW) that students and schools are involved with; these may be other than USFIRST competitions. Examples are listed towards the end of the original SIGCT Robotics wiki page
 * Joe's opinion: this is not an exhibit for vendors, but rather a showcase for teams of students involved with various robots and various competitions at all age levels in K-12
 * [A.Epstein] Student teams may have a hard time staying and demonstrating for an entire day. Depending on the availability of teams around Denver, a schedule of multiple teams would be advised.