Colglazier Corner

Monday, December 20, 2010

Practice Debate Tournament

This year I learned how to debate and we had the practice tournament the weekend after the First Lego League Regionals Tournament...December 11th. Everybody who signed up got to debate four times. The first round I was able to debate my friend, which was exactly what I wanted, and we also had a great judge! This round was not really how a real round was like. One because we had a new timer and needed a bit of assistance so we ended up with a bit more time than what we're actually supposed to have (with the prep time) and two because we were having too much fun!! This round, though, gave us a feel of what a round was like. The second round I did OK. My opponent's value for me was a bit difficult to argue...especially since I had no idea what it was! The third round I was up against someone who has done this kind of stuff before and then the fourth round I was up against a guy who had democracy as his value. I actually didn't do so great, but somehow I ended up winning the round....

So I won half of the debates I debated. The rounds I won I was the negative speaker. I didn't really care what I won and what I didn't. I had a blast! It was so much fun...I don't know why, but it kind of became addicting!

By Bethany Colglazier

First Lego League Regionals Tournament

In case you all didn't know, I am on a First Lego League Team (Bethany is). First Lego League has two main parts: an engineering side and a project side.

On the engineering side we program a robot to complete missions. Each year First Lego League has a theme and this year was on Biomedical Engineering. Each year is different with it's missions. This year we had missions in which we needed to push things, grab things, and place things. So we came up with some attachments to help our robot complete those missions. At first it's pretty easy and it's a lot of fun....but then toward the middle it can get pretty frustrating, but still a lot of fun!!

On the project side we come up with a problem related to the theme of the year then come up with an improvement or solution. We focused on hearing loss and came up with a survey to send out to those who have hearing loss. One of the big problems that the majority had was batteries. The batteries didn't last too long and they had to keep replacing them. So we came up with body powered hearing aids that run by the beat of your heart, sound waves, blowing from your mouth or bit of quartz. One of our team members took all of our ideas and put it into a funny skit that we presented to the judges.

Now onto the tournament part! On Saturday, December 4th, 2010, we had our regional tournament. Each team got judged in three parts: Teamwork, Robotics, and the Project. Then later in the afternoon there were three rounds of robot runs. First was teamwork, which went great and we had a lot of fun with the teamwork challenge. We had to pick out something that we wanted to act out and we chose an airplane. The second judging round was on Robotics. We were able to show them our attachments and our robot runs. Then finally our third judging round was on the project. We presented our skit and then went over some things that we did over the season. Also during each judging round the judges would ask questions about whatever they were mainly judging on.

In the afternoon we ran our robot and the best score we ended up with was a 95. This was fine by us because we knew the robotics part wasn't exactly our strength. We did know, however, that our project and teamwork part went well and we figured we had a chance at that.

The day went pretty well and we were all exhausted at the award ceremony. They did first and second place for Robot Runs, Robot design, Teamwork, and Project. We place 2nd in Teamwork and that automatically put us in the states competition!!! We were all very excited and very unexcited. We just knew it was going to be another long day!! Anyway, states competition is in January!!!

Oh I forgot to mention that one other team member and I created a website to educate the "WORLD WIDE WEB" about our ideas and about First Lego League! We had lots of help from our Young Adult Mentor (or "YAM" for short) to make this website look good and to be on the web! So thank-you Christian! Our website link: http://www.theferbots.110mb.com/

By Bethany Colglazier

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Washington D.C. Trip Update - Day 7

Carl, Miriam, Christian and I in front of the back of the house

A beautiful view

The back of the house

The House at Mount Vernon

Today, we are traveling back to North Carolina. However, before we left, we visited Mount Vernon. We bought tickets to get in and watched a 20 min video. This was on George Washington and his house in Mount Vernon. Then we walked to the actual house part and took a tour there. It was also pretty gray the day we were there. Next, we zipped through the grounds because we were pretty tired. We checked out the burial site of George Washington and his wife.

Once we were done we headed back to the visitor center and walked through two museums on Mount Vernon & George Washington. After that we ate in the food court and then walked back to our car and drove to the interstate and headed home.

It was pretty boring, but I guess most car trips are like that!! For dinner we stopped at Cracker Barrel and had a delicious meal. About an hour after we were home!!! We unpacked and went to bed.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Day 6 Pictures

The Washington Monument from across the World War II Memorial

Washington Monument across the reflecting pool

The Lincoln Memorial at night

If you look closely at the stairs it's packed!!

The Washington Monument at night

Washington D.C. Trip Update - Day 6

Today we drove to a conference on Do Hard Things with the Harris brothers, Alex and Brett. Their book, "Do Hard Things" is a teenage rebellion against low expectations.

They split the conference into four sessions. Each session was kind of like a sermon at church. The sessions had a story that they shared in their book, "Do Hard Things".

The kids/teens were handed a response card (keypad) to answer some of the questions they had throughout the conference. All the answers would be locked in and then they would show the results. I thought that was really cool.

They would also shoot rockets off a launcher to the section that cheered the loudest and whoever caught the rocket got whatever they were giving out (t-shirts or books).

The band Reilly was there to perform and play the worship songs. The two violinists were awesome!!

Alex preached the first session, Brett preached the next two, then their oldest brother, Josh Harris was our guest speaker.

Towards the end they told us that they usually announce the amount of response cards they're missing so we can try to find them. This time they told us that this amount was a first. We were missing.........ZERO keypads!!!!!

Unfortunately we had to leave a bit early so we could meet up with Boy Scout Troop 204 (Christian, Carl and Dad's scout troop) and walk around and see all the monuments lit up!!

So we rushed to the hotel, changed, picked something up to up, and drove to the metro station.

Since it was after the rush hour, the trains started slowing down, which basically means less trains coming by. We hopped onto the next train going our direction and rode to the station at Braddock Road where we waited for about 20 min for it to start moving again. We got off two stops before the one we planned on getting off because we figured it would take longer to get where we needed. So we walked a ways to get to the World War II Memorial. There we found the troop and stuck with them the rest of the night in D.C.

The World War II Memorial was really beautiful at night! The fountain and all the lights made it look wonderful! The Lincoln Memorial was pretty cool, also.

We rode the metro with them and we got off at the stop before theirs.

By Bethany Colglazier