Intel Oregon FLL Championship Information

MOST IMPORTANT

PRE-CHAMPIONSHIP INFORMATION PAGE FOR COACHES and MENTORS

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UPDATE: Intel Oregon Championship Assignments for FOOD FACTOR
PINK TEAMS are SATURDAY and GREEN TEAMS are SUNDAY

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DETAILED SCHEDULE FOR TEAMS

SATURDAY, January 14, 2012 ............... SUNDAY, January 15, 2012

WEATHER ADVISORY STATUS FOR FLL CHAMPIONSHIP

Teams unable to attend Championship
Saturday -
6030, 6031, 8407 8624

Food Factor Championship Tournament Payment Information

PAYMENT STATUS as Jan 5th at 5:00 PM

Cost is $50 per team - teams who received an ORTOP team scholarship are exempt from paying the $50

To pay by Credit Card or Check - CLICK HERE FOR FORM

To pay by Purchase Order - CLICK HERE FOR FORM

Pre-Championship Tournament Packet

CORE VALUES POSTER

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE NEW CORE VALUES JUDGING REQUIREMENTS

CHAMPIONSHIP CORE VALUES POSTER INSTRUCTIONS - pdf

FLL Core Values VIDEO from FLL

CHANGES TO CORE VALUES JUDGING

Championship teams are required to create and bring a Core Values Poster for the Core Values interview. The format of the Core Values Judge session is described on the top of the document.

CHAMPIONSHIP NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE

Dec 8 - Dec 13 - Dec16

Coach and Team Member Survey -Food Factor

TEAM MEMBER .......... COACH/MENTOR SURVEY- TBA

CHAMPIONSHIP DATE ASSIGNMENTS and PAYMENT STATUS

Championship Newsletter Archive

FRIDAY, JANUARY 13

Dear FLL Championship Coaches:

At this time the NOAA weather forecast for the Portland Metro area (specifically Liberty HS area)  is:

Friday Night:  Patchy fog after 10pm. Patchy freezing fog after 10pm. Otherwise, partly cloudy, with a low around 29. Calm wind. 

Saturday: A 30 percent chance of showers after 10am. Patchy fog before 10am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a high near 43. South southwest wind between 3 and 8 mph.  Saturday Night: Rain showers likely before 10pm, then rain and snow showers likely. Snow level 1400 feet lowering to 200 feet. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 28. West southwest wind between 3 and 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. 

Sunday: Rain and snow showers likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 38. South southwest wind between 8 and 11 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. 

Sunday Night: Rain and snow showers likely. Snow level 300 feet. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 29. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. 

This forecast includes most of our teams attending the Championship but not all. ORTOP emphasizes that each team assumes the responsibility to make their own decision to travel to and from the Championship.

Our current plan: Saturday and Sunday events are scheduled to take place on time.

SATURDAY ARRIVAL: We anticipate no issues for team/volunteer arrival on Saturday morning.

SUNDAY ARRIVAL:  We strongly encourage teams to arrive on time and check in by 8:30 am and coaches attend the 8:35am coach meeting. However, if weather in your area dictates that it is best for you to delay leaving ORTOP will accommodate late arriving teams. Late Check in will be at the VIP/Info desk. We suggest trying to arrive at least 30 minutes in advance of your 1^st scheduled activity.

EARLY DEPARTURE/ Saturday and Sunday: Teams are free to leave at anytime they feel it is necessary. If your team decides to leave early, please tell Pit Administration. The official coach can pick up Championship Medals for the team at the VIP/INFO DESK.  Medals will only be given to the coach for the whole team. We will not pass out medals to individual team members.

PLEASE NOTE: FLL Rules state - that teams must complete all judge sessions and at least one table competition round to be eligible for awards. If the team completed all judging sessions and at least one table competition round and wins an award, ORTOP will ship the trophy to the coach.  Understand that if your team skips participating in one of the four activities, they are not eligible to win any award.

CHANGE TO THE FORECAST: ORTOP will continue to monitor the forecast for the Portland area. If conditions are forecasted to worsen or if conditions during the event worsen, ORTOP will assess the situation and act accordingly in the interest of safety. Please advise everyone associated with your team who is traveling to the event to check the weather advisory box at: ORTOP FLL  before leaving for the event on Sunday morning.  UPDATE WILL BE POSTED BY 5:30 am on Sunday morning.

Notification: To notify ORTOP that your team is delayed and will be arriving late, please send email to Cathy_Swider@ous.edu  or send text message to 971-219-1020 – Include Team Number and Status. I will receive them on my cell phone.

Detailed Competition Schedule: SATURDAY, January 14        SUNDAY, January 15

ORTOP cannot accommodate any requests to switch tournament days, please do not ask.

Please  research your travel route carefully and make the best and safest decision for your kids.

Regards,

Cathy Swider

On behalf of the ORTOP FLL Planning Committee

January 5, 2012

DETAILED COMPETITION SCHEDULE for the Intel Oregon FIRST LEGO League Championship Tournaments

SATURDAY, January 14, 2012 ............... SUNDAY, January 15, 2012

PAYMENT STATUS - PAYMENT STATUS as Jan 5th at 5:00 PM
Please click the link and see if you are paid. We did experience several power outages over the holidays that disrupted the fax machine. We have about a half dozen failed transmission notices but we have no idea from who. If you are on the not paid list please submit a payment. All of our mail from the PSU mailroom is delivered and update date.

Cost is $50 per team

To pay by Credit Card or Check - CLICK HERE FOR FORM

To pay by Purchase Order - CLICK HERE FOR FORM

January 3, 2012

Happy New Year FLL Championship Teams!

We have lots of information for you regarding the FLL Championship Tournament. The Pre-Championship letter is posted on a webpage with links and tables with most used information. You'll find bright yellow boxes with information that reflects differences between a qualifying tournament and the championship. This will help you know what to skim and what to read more closely. We've also provided an easy to print letter for you to give to parents with a map explaining details about the event. Please make sure your guests know your team number and team name. I expect to have the detailed tournament schedule up late this week or early next week.

CLICK HERE TO CONNECT TO THE Intel Oregon FLL Pre-CHAMPIONSHIP INFORMATION PAGE

December 16

Intel Oregon FLL Championship Assignments

Intel Oregon FIRST LEGO League Championship Assignments! Saturday teams are in PINK and Sunday teams are in GREEN! Thank you all for being so prompt in submitting your registrations. This is the absolute earliest we have ever been able to release the assignments.

A statement from Robert Swider, ORTOP Head Judge for Core Values Judging regarding the Core Values Poster

The decision to use a Core Values Poster only at the Championship Tournaments was made by the head judges after the season started. It is an experiment in ways we can improve the judging process to make it fairer for all involved. Several years ago when we incorporated the teamwork activity for the first time at the Championship Tournaments we did not tell the teams in advance that they would be engaging in an activity. That did not adversely impact their ability to fully engage in the activity.

We chose not to announce the Core Values Poster until after the qualifying tournaments as we did not want to create any confusion among the 426 participating teams, including the 308 teams that did not advance to the championship events. All teams advancing to the championship events are on the same footing. You all received notice of the poster at the same time and everyone will be trying to recall what happened over the last 4 months. We are interested in the big-picture CV experiences, not just a laundry list of details.

When I judged at the World Festival in St. Louis last April FIRST utilized such a poster in the FLL judging process. The teams were not advised of the poster until after being invited to the Championship. I was impressed by the additional information the poster allowed the teams to share with the judges. The description of the Core Values Poster given to the advancing teams and the coaches was provided by FIRST. The poster does not have to be a masterpiece or even artful. It is intended to be a device for the teams to use to discuss their season and share with the judges what they have learned about Core Values. Whenever I train the Core Values Judges on the teamwork activities I stress to them it is the process that is important not the result of the activity they are observing. Likewise I will instruct the judges that the poster is a device to assist the teams while making a presentation concerning what they have learned about Core Values. We will not be judging the quality of the posters; rather we will be interested in the information conveyed about the teams' knowledge of and integration of the core values. We believe that the poster will provide the teams with the opportunity to collect, document and organize their thoughts as they reflect upon their season and upon the FLL Core Values. We do not believe that creating the poster should take a great deal of effort and probably it should take just a few hours, which can easily be accomplished in the first two weeks of January.

Depending on our experience at the Championship we may decide to incorporate the posters into future Qualifying Tournaments, where they can highlight their whole season, but we thought that was too big of a step for this season.

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DECEMBER 13

Congratulations!

We now have 118 FLL teams advancing to the Intel Oregon FIRST LEGO League Championship presented by Rockwell Collins. 

Things you need to know!

Championship Registration – (online link will be sent out on December 14^th at 5:00 pm – that’s tomorrow!  )

Oregon holds two FLL championships. Equal in all ways. At the end of the Championship weekend, we’ll have two co-Champion’s Award winners.
Advancing teams must register. Assignments are made on a first come, first serve basis with consideration of day preference reasons.

Ideally, we will have 60 teams on Saturday and 58 on Sunday.  Before you register know which day your team is available. Once the schedule is published, it will not be changed. If you are available for both, please indicate that, if you can attend on Sunday, please choose Sunday.

Once assignments are posted, they are final.

What you need to know in order to complete the Championship Registration online form that opens on December 14^th at 5:00 pm.

Enter Team Information exactly as you want it to appear in the Championship program

PAGE 1:
TEAM INFO

Team #, Team Name, Team City, Affiliation.

Date preference: Jan 14, Jan 15 or either or decline invitation

Coach info: Name, email, emergency contact info
Special Needs: Is there something we should communicate to our judges and referees about one or more of your team members?

Team Member info: How many team members will attend the tournament?  In what grades? Is this the first year ALL team members have attended a FLL Qualifying Tournament?

Brief description of the Project: one sentence please.

Confirmation you are aware of the changes to Core Values Judging.

Page 2:
Publicity release Information
Confirm or decline permission for ORTOP to write a news release about your team if they win an award
If you confirm, provide names of coaches/mentors
If you confirm, provide first and last names of team members whose parents are ok with having their names in a newspaper. Can opt to have all, some or no names published.

Provide name of daily newspaper delivered in your town, name of 1 or 2 community newspapers

Page 3:
Coach/Mentor/Adult Core Values info and Payment info

AND don’t forget to click submit at the bottom of every page.  An auto emailed response WILL NOT be generated by our low-cost registration system. I will contact teams that haven’t registered on Friday to remind them.  If you fail to register by 5:00 pm on December 16^th I will assign your team to a tournament.

CHANGES TO CORE VALUES JUDGING
For the Intel Oregon Championship, instead of a teamwork activity in the Core Values Judging room, teams are asked to create a Core Values poster to specific requirements. The team will prepare a 5-minute presentation to explain their poster. This will be followed by 5-minutes of questions.

The document is posted: CLICK HERE TO SEE IT.

OTHER STUFF YOU NEED TO KNOW!
Team members are free to change (or not change) anything about their robot, the programming, the project.  Core values really apply. Changes should come FROM THE KIDS, not adults. Coaches and mentors should be encouraging but not the driving force to change. 
If for some reason, you want to add team members to your roster, you can do that but your team must not exceed ten team members. Also,a team member cannot be on two championship teams.
Do take an opportunity to discuss your team’s rubrics with them? Do they agree or disagree with the judges’ assessment? What can they improve upon?

And a word from Scott Evans, FLL Game Designer.

TO VETERAN TEAMS:  Don't draw false conclusions about yourselves or this year's game just because scores are lower this year.  The lower scores don't mean you're "not as good" as you were last year, and they don't mean the game is "too hard."  More thought and more effort still increase your score, and performance rankings reflect this as always.  To understand how this game is different than games in the past, imagine a jumping game.  You stand in place and jump as high as you can, and you can see how high you jump by looking at marks on the wall.  For years, teams that got REALLY good at jumping were hitting their heads on the ceiling, and had no idea how high they could have jumped if the ceiling wasn't there.  So the room has been rebuilt.  And the new ceiling is twice as high - higher than any team can jump - this way we're SURE all teams are free to jump as high as they possibly can and still be measured.   To complete the renovation, the marks on the wall are spaced by a new measurement no one is familiar with.

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Your email address has been transferred to a new information list reserved for FLL Teams advancing to the Intel Oregon FIRST LEGO League Championship for the FOOD FACTOR Challenge.
At the Awards Ceremony at your Qualifying Event, the official coach should have received an information letter along with the Champion’s trophy or ACE Invitation.  I have received word that in the excitement some Qualifying Tournament Directors did not pass out the letter to advancing teams.  And a few of you lost it on the way home.  Have no fear, I’ve posted it on a NEW webpage for the FLL Championship.
http://www.ortop.org/fll/CTInfoFF.html  Please bookmark it.

The FLL Championship ONLINE Registration will open on Wednesday, December 14th at 5:00 pm and will close on Friday, December 16th at 5:00 pm.
A list of teams ADVANCING TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP are listed HERE.  

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