Greetings from VEX Worlds 2024!

[Audra_Selkowitz]

Today I had the privilege of getting to meet and talk with teams, coaches, and parents from around the world. It was an absolute joy to see and hear the energy, enthusiasm, and joy that radiated from these students and their supporters!

There were so many notable conversations, but I’ll try to sum up just a few that connected for me throughout the day. One common theme was around the amount of iteration that teams did in both their robot design and code, to get them to Worlds. Several teams talked about major build changes that they made just in the last 7-10 days before getting on a plane or in a car to get to Worlds! Something that stood out to me was the way teams talked about the evolution of their game strategy in relation to their robot design. Here are few examples…

Team 8787A - Eastwood Robotics - worked throughout the season to continually make their robot stronger. They learned from scouting at a lot of signature events, that if they could create a robot that could accomplish multiple strategies, it would be to their alliance’s advantage. They wanted their robot to be able to shoot, intake, and hang, so that they would be able to have a variable strategy depending on who they were partnered with, or defending against. They had a very detailed engineering notebook, and highlighted the role the notebook played in their iterative process. Not only did it help them with building, but with strategy also - so they could complement or defend their partners based on what they’d learned.

Team 550C - Cataplexis - on the other hand, took a very different approach - making conscious choices about the elements of their strategy to focus on, and building accordingly. They decided early on in the season that they were not going to worry about skills this season, and instead wanted to be a match scoring robot. So they learned quickly that the best way to do that was to be fast! So they went through about 5 “major” iterations to make their robot as small, light, and fast as possible so that they could maximize their scoring and descoring of Triballs during the match. Late in the season they added ‘wings’ to their robot to help them move more objects even more efficiently, and ‘sweep’ the Field or a goal.

Team 3249R - Ratatoiulle - took the exact opposite approach – choosing to make their robot bigger, heavier, and stronger than others on the Field. Slow and steady wins the race for this team! Unlike the small, fast robots - their robot is intentionally designed to be able to methodically move a lot of Triballs, and also to push other robots out of the way because of its size and strength. They talked about how they wanted their robot to “out-torque” its opponents. They felt like this unique strategy also set them apart from the other teams and helped pave their way to Worlds. One of the most interesting components of the build was that they had two motors that powered the drivetrain, and then shifted to power their lift mechanism for the endgame, so that they could lift their heavy robot to an elevation. They’re continuing to work on the elevation component - having just redesigned their current lift in the last week!

While the strategies and robots were vastly different - the drive to learn, the camaraderie and collaboration, and the creativity and joy were common threads in these teams, and all those I talked with today. I can’t wait to see these teams in action in more matches, and to hear more about their approaches to the game, robotics, and to learning.

[Audra_Selkowitz]

Today was another inspiring day at VEX Worlds! @Aimee_DeFoe and I watched matches, and talked with teams, coaches, and parents throughout the day. There were a few common threads that stood out for me in these conversations that I thought would be good to share with the Community.

Coach’s Mindset - One thing that stood out to me as we’ve been speaking with coaches and mentors, is how comfortable they are with students being the drivers of learning on their teams. Over and over we heard coaches say things like “My kids look up whatever they need”, or “They know way more than I do about coding”, or “I got them started, and they really took it from there”. Often as teachers, we can feel pressure to have all the answers even before we begin teaching something, but these coaches not only are comfortable with their own limitations, they embrace the fact that the whole goal of the team is essentially, for their students to grow and learn (potentially beyond their coach’s breadth of knowledge) in order to succeed.

One coach phrased it beautifully, saying “I don’t have to be good at it for my kids to learn from it.” We talked about how he initially was put into the coach role by an administrator, but quickly realized that things did not have to be perfect to be valuable to his students. Another coach talked about how being freed from having to be ‘all knowing’ enabled him to focus more on the soft skills or life skills with his team - things like communication, problem solving, and finding answers to things you want to learn more about.

Team Mindset - This openness of the coaches also seemed to translate directly to their students. Something that struck me throughout my conversations with teams was how open minded and flexible they were in their thinking. Not just about their robot designs or strategy, there’s a LOT of flexibility there, but that they seemed to have developed a disposition that learning is just as important (if not more) as winning. While all of the teams at Worlds have had success in order to get here, each one could also talk about things that were unsuccessful for them during the season. How they started wanting to build a descoring robot, but realized that wasn’t as effective as they thought it would be, or how they spent weeks on an elevation mechanism, but got knocked over in the competition and couldn’t use it, or how they started off wanting to build a catapult shooting robot, but shifted to a faster robot with an intake. In each of these stories, teams talked about how they learned from seeing other teams ideas, from losing at competitions, and from sharing openly with their VEX community in order to continue learning and iterating.

Along with this, teams also talk about how much time and energy they spend on their team. The commitment is significant - but what struck me the most, is that even with spending a lot of time and energy on something, if it didn’t work the way they wanted it to, it was ok. Even if teams lost a match, broke their robot, or got disqualified, there didn’t seem to be a major blow to their confidence or their sense of purpose as a team. The message from the students seems to be that the goal is continuous learning - which can be so much more powerful than simply winning a game. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!