Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Homecoming Parade

GET SMART participated in the Columbia High School homecoming parade on Friday. It was a great opportunity for us to be seen in the community. We took the robot along for the ride.




Thursday, September 29, 2011

Tempest 'n Tampa

GET SMART participated in the Tempest 'n Tampa off-season FIRST robotics competition. We did fantastic, especially for rookies. We placed 5th after the qualifying rounds which meant we were team captains for alliance selection. We selected Jungle Robotics (fellow rookies) and Team Krunch (the event organizers) to be our alliance partners. We won the quarter finals, advancing to the semi-finals to take on The Pink Team. They were fierce competitors back in March and proved to be a great team once again. We lost the semi-finals to the Pink Team and their alliance and then watched them go on to win the competition.

After the matches were over a few awards were given out. We were very excited to be awarded the Judges Award. When they announced the award they mentioned how we started late in the game, with no money and no supplies and managed to use our unique talents to raise money, make a successful robot and help other teams along the way. Two events, two awards ... this team continues to amaze me. I can't wait to see what they do next season.

Here are a few pictures from the event ...








Friday, September 9, 2011

Our Team Picture with JCPenney's Staff

Fundraising Update & Tampa Competition

We had a very successful car wash and bake sale this week. We raised enough funds to travel to Tampa next week to participate in Tempest 'n Tampa, on off-season robotics competition. We've made some modifications to the robot and hope to finish things up tomorrow. The new team members are learning a lot about what it takes to be a contributing member of GET SMART and we're all very excited about the upcoming season.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Back to School

We got a jump start on the new school year last Thursday when we met up in my classroom to work on the robot. It was great to catch up with everyone and hear about what they did over the summer. We talked fundraising and came up with a few ideas. The new team members got to see our robot in action and help us change to a single lead screw system of moving our scissor lift. (They also got to witness how goofy it gets around here.) The results were fantastic and now we are hoping to take our robot to Tempest 'n Tampa.  I'm looking forward to a another great school year and robotics season. Go FIRST!

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Our Radio Interview

Team members Brad and Hayley joined me at 96.5 THE JET for a radio interview back in April. You can listen to it here. Thanks to this interview, we received an anonymous donation in the amount of $2,500. Thank you so much to our Anonymous Angel Grams for her generous support!

Welcome to the GET SMART Coach's Blog

We are FIRST Robotics Competition Team #3556 aka GET SMART - a team of students, teachers and mentors from Columbia High School in Lake City, FL. We started this journey called FIRST Robotics in December 2010. We've come a long way in a very short time and look forward to what the future holds.

Gateway
Engineering
Team of


Students
Mastering
Animation
Robotics and
Technology

This blog will be a way for me to share our team progress as we raise funds, educate ourselves, reach out to our community and build robots. If you have questions, comments or would like to be involved with our team, please leave a comment or send me an email.

~Mrs. C