Thank you FPL!

GET SMART would like to thank Florida Power & Light for continuing to support our team. I would like to send a special thanks to Mr. Jeff Simmons from FPL who has continued to procure funding for our team. Mr. Simmons' son Jacob was a critical member of our team during his senior year, our rookie season of 2011. Mr. Simmons continues to support our team and recently paved the way for us to receive a $1,000 sponsorship from FPL's education program.

Thank you Atkins

GET SMART is proud to announce a new Einstein level sponsor. Atkins, a global engineering firm with an office here in Lake City, presented the team with a check for $5,000 at the school board meeting last night. We greatly appreciate the support and hope this is the beginning of a long and productive partnership. Special thanks to Mr. Shawn Justice, PE of Atkins for applying for this community funding for our team.

Shawn Justice, PE from Atkins & Team Coach Celena Crews

Members of the team and school board along with our principal and Mr. Justice

Summer Fundraising

Since the beginning we've talked about summer fundraising. Well thanks to a very motivated team captain named Dugan and his team members, we've finally accomplished the mission of summer fundraising. So far we've had a Mochi Night, a Ruby Tuesday's dining to donate, a carwash at First Federal, and a Pelican's day. Thank you so much to these local businesses for helping our team this summer.

 Even our mentors work hard to bring in funds

 Even younger siblings help out around here. 

 We know how to put the "FUN" in fundraisers.

We have a dancing Carlos

2013 Youth Engineering Camp - Hosted by GET SMART and the CHS Engineering Technology Program

We've put together a great week long engineering camp aimed at students 8 to 11 years of age. The camp will be held August 5th - 9th in Room 812 of Columbia High School. All supplies, lunch, and snacks will be provided. Lots of fun learning, hands-on projects and outdoor activities. Please email us at getsmartrobots@gmail.com if you are interested in registering your child or would like more information. As of the time of this posting we have nine spots remaining.

Where do I begin?

So many great things going on around here lately that I don't know where to begin this post. We had a successful yet stressful season, raised a lot of much needed money, and learned much along the way. After spending most of the first day trying to make it through inspection at the Orlando Regional, we were alliance captains and made it to the semifinals. We even spent a good bit of time in the number one spot during the first day of qualifying rounds. I think we even surprised ourselves. Our robot, Agent 99, took a couple of falls from the tower and was in need of repairs that we couldn't make on the sidelines during those last matches. Regardless, it was another great year for GET SMART and our success really has the team pumped up for off-season events and our future in general. 

I'll leave you with some photos from competition. 

Our drivers, Chandler and Timmy

Our team captain, Hayley

Agent 99 climbing the tower in Orlando

Our travel team at the end of the Orlando Regional

The team is busy planning fundraisers, helping out a Lego league team-in-the-making, and planning a week long engineering camp for 3rd - 5th graders later this summer. I'll post more about the camp soon. If you are interested, email us at getsmartrobots@gmail.com for more information. 

Frisbeez in the Trap

It's been a while but there's good reason ... we've been super busy! We are almost at the end of the 2013 build season. We have a fantastic group of creative, motivated team members this year. We have 28 students and a few new mentors this year. Our PR team is organized and working very hard. We have an Inventor model of our robot. We've been out in the community doing fundraisers and a festival. Our website has gone through quite a bit of positive change. All this and we have our own music video. These kids rock!

Please watch our video, Frisbeez in the Trap, on YouTube and help us by sharing with your friends.

Valedictorians

I know, I know ... it's been far too long since I've posted anything and we've had a lot of great things happen. Finalists at competition, awards, robot demo at the mall and plenty of other fun stuff. I've been super busy finishing up my education classes and the year of craziness teaching five completely different subjects but I just had to share this with you. Two of our three valedictorians were robotics team members. Here is an article from the newspaper where Bryce mentions us.

Radio Interview on 96.5 The Jet

A few team members joined me for a radio interview this week. You can listen to our interview here. Thanks to Ken Allen and WJTK The Jet for supporting us.

The Wait is Over!

The long awaited, much anticipated kickoff weekend is here. Tomorrow at 6am our team will head to Orlando for the 2012 FRC Kickoff. We are all super excited and anxious to see the game revealed and to begin the next six weeks of craziness otherwise know as "Build Season".

We are still working on raising the funds needed to make it through the season but I'm confident we will get there. The students revamped our team website and we will get our new sponsors and other info updated very soon. I would like to thank jcpenney, Anytime Fitness, Mid State, Publix and First Federal Bank for their recent contributions.

We are welcoming a few new mentors this year and look forward to getting them hooked. Mentor bios will be added to the website soon as well. I truly appreciate the help and support from our mentors and sponsors because I definitely could not do this on my own.

Looking forward to a great season and kicking some robot tail!

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.

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 ...

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.

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!

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