Hello FIRST FTC mentors and coaches!
 
It’s time to nominate your students for the 2017-2018 Dean’s List Award!
A Dean’s list submission guide is attached for your reference.
 
Important Dates:
January 15th, 11:59 pm        
Student nominations must be uploaded to FIRST FTC Dean’s List site (accessed via Team Registration System)
 
February 10th, February 11th League Championship Tournament(s)
Interviews of nominated students take place at each League’s Championship Tournament
 
February 28th San Diego Regional Championship
Three (3) student Finalists announced to be in the running for Dean’s List Winner spots at the World Championship
 
 
Student Eligibility:
Every registered team may submit two (2) students as FIRST Dean’s List Award Semi-finalists.
Students must be a sophomore (grade 10) or junior (grade 11) to be eligible for this award.
 
Nomination Process:
Student nomination(s) are done electronically from the Team Registration Dashboard through the FIRST Tech Challenge Dean’s List Award System (see detailed instructions in attached Submission Guideline)
 The coach or mentor nominating the student(s) must submit an essay explaining why the student should receive this award. 
The essay must be 4,000 characters or less.
 
For a list of Dean’s List award selection criteria and a detailed explanation of the submission process please see the attached Dean’s List Submission Guide.
 
REMEMBER! :
All student nominations must be uploaded to the FIRST Dean’s List site via the Team Registration System no later than January 15th, 11:59 pm
 
 
This nomination process can often be confusing for first-time mentors and coaches. 
Please do not hesitate to reach out to me for further clarification if needed.
[email protected]  (858) 431-9189
 
Good Luck to your teams as they build and compete during this 2017-2018 FTC season!
 
Kind Regards,
Julie Bonnardel

The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) is a fun contest for U.S. and Canadian middle and high school students in which contestants compete by solving compelling and creative puzzles in linguistics and computational linguistics. Requiring no previous knowledge of linguistics, languages, or computing, these puzzles can be solved by analytic reasoning alone, and serve as a fun introduction to a field to which many students have never been introduced. Winners of NACLO are eligible to compete in the International Linguistics Olympiad, one of twelve international high school science Olympiads.

​Try some of these practice problems: http://nacloweb.org/practice.php#naclo_online

Students must register by Jan 14, 2018 for the Open Round at SDSU; more information available here:
https://sites.google.com/a/mail.sdsu.edu/naclo/

The top US team and perhaps additional teams will get a trip to the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL)!
http://nacloweb.org/

The Houston Champions: 724 Rednek Robotics Wun, 4216 Rise of Hephaestus, and 8651 Wait For It have won at the FIRST Festival of Champions! It was to be a best 3 out of 5 matches, and the Houston alliance won the first two matches. However, in match #3 an opponent's ball got stuck in the top of Rise of Hephaestus robot for almost all of Teleop - thus leading to a 260 point penalty! So going into match #4, it was 2 to 1. 4216 tried again during autonomous to pick up one of the red balls that 724 had already shot into the vortex, but unfortunately the re-shot ball missed the vortex. These teams had collaborated long distance by Skype and tested meshing their autonomous routines by running them simultaneously on their home fields! In the end, they were able to score more balls into the vortex and thereby get their 3rd win and take the championship! Great performance teams, and congratulations to 4216 Rise of Hephaestus for representing us in San Diego FTC so well!

Enjoy your visit to Dean Kamen's house this evening!  For those of us at home, we can take a peek in the first minute of Dean Kamen's Slingshot water purifier video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klHo_bvyDoA

And what 3 months of collaboration might do: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI96gCev5V8

Tomorrow the FIRST Festival of Champions will be held in Manchester, NH. Champion FTC and FRC teams from the FIRST Championships in Houston and St. Louis in April will be meeting for a final competition. And our local team #4216 Rise of Hephaestus will be a part of the action! It will be held from 9am-1pm Eastern time, and a live broadcast on Twitch will be available from 10:30am-1pm Eastern/ 7:30am-10am Pacific:
https://www.twitch.tv/firstinspires
​This is the last event in the Velocity Vortex season. Follow #FIRSTFestivalofChamps on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook or better yet, tune in and cheer on Rise of Hephaestus!

For those that were watching the news or live feed, you may have caught that Ivanka Trump attended an exhibition match at FIRST Global Challenge this morning. Members of FTC 3595 Schrodinger's Hat and FTC 6037 W.A.G.S. Robotics make up Team USA and can be seen in these pictures:
​https://twitter.com/F1RSTglobal/status/887382754685575173
https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/887315148163211264

The inaugural FIRST Global Challenge is now over, and not all the scores and information is posted yet, but their Twitter account has been announcing the awards:

Sophia Kovalevskaya awards for International Journey go to Teams Madagascar, France, and Nigeria

Dr. Mae Jemison awards for International Unity go to Teams United Arab Emirates, Australia, and Canada

Rajaa Cherkaoui El Moursli awards for Courageous Achievement go to Teams Oman, Afghanistan, and South Sudan

​Zhang Heng Awards for Engineering Design go to Teams Mexico, Mali, and India

Ustad Ahmad Lahori Awards for Innovation in Engineering go to Teams Spain, Indonesia, and Latvia

Albert Einstein Award winners for FIRST Global International Excellence are Teams Lebanon, Tunisia, and continental team Oceania

FIRST Global Grand Challenge Awards go to Teams Armenia, Poland, and continental team Europe

Videos of the event can be found at their YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTSVzV2M_ZH-dY1yAz5fiZw/videos

Day 2 video (Tuesday July 18)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddh0kF-DbSk

article about the team from Afghanistan that was denied visas twice but eventually got permission to attend:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/world/asia/afghanistan-girls-robotics-visas-trump.html

Congratulations to all who participated or volunteered at the event!

Congratulations to 4216 Rise of Hephaestus for winning PTC Design Award, Captain of the Finalist Alliance, and 3rd Inspire at the 2017 FTC Asia Pacific Invitational (API) in Sydney, AUSTRALIA!!

For those of you who missed the weekend event and would like to catch some of it, the livestream is now available on Youtube. They mute the microphone between a lot of the action so don't be surprised to hear nothing even though the video is running.
​
Day 1 of 2017 FTC API
​
Day 2 of 2017 FTC API

After winning PTC Design and Captain of Finalist Alliance, Rise of Hephaestus receives 3rd Inspire!
​​The timed links are not working properly - go to 8 hr 6 min to view

From Pam Meistrell of the Rancho Santa Fe FTC teams:

Hello Gauss, Descartes, Euclid & Turing Leagues!
 
If any teams from our FTC Leagues this past season are interested in a final competition opportunity (Velocity Vortex) before everyone takes off for the summer, there is a low-key event at the Del Mar Fairgrounds Sat, June 10. Our school is bringing the field setup/components.  $25 fee per team includes a pass for each team member into the Fair – what a  deal!   No stress – just FUN!
 
So far there are eight FTC teams:  Inspiration, Green.Griffins, RSF Intergalactic Dragons, RSF Logitechies, RSF Singularity, RSF NewBees, Correia Middle School, and Point Loma Senior High School.  Did I forget anyone?
 
Saturday, June 10
10:00am-4:00pm (might finish earlier)
4th Floor Grandstand at the Fairgrounds
 
Registration deadline has been extended to this Friday 5/19.  It might still say the 12th, but it’s been extended.
https://sdfair.com/contests/summer-of-robotics/   
The Robotics Division number is 5001, and the class number for FTC is 002.
 
If you have any specific questions you can contact Samantha Hamilton at SouthWest Robotics in Science Education [email protected]
 

This is somewhat belated, but we have not found an official posting at FIRST yet.  This listing is from the FTC subreddit.

Congratulations to 10092 Green.Griffins for being named finalists for both the Rockwell Collins Innovate Award and also PTC Design Award!!


Awards
Volunteer of the year: Bob Atkinson

Judges’ Award: 10165 Apex Predators

Toolbox Judges’ Award: 3188 Squiggle Splat Bang

Compass Award Nominees: Krishnan Duraiswami 4855, Chase Rainwater 9879, Ms. Sue 12527
Compass Award: Krishnan Duraiswami 4855

Promote Award Nominees: 7300 Guzzoline Robotics, 5795 Back to the Drawing Board, 3595 Schrodingers Hat
Promote Award: 3595 Schrodingers Hat

Control Award Nominees: 2856 Tesseract, 3491 FIX IT, 3595 Schrodingers Hat, 7172 Technical Difficulties, 8045 Gromit’s Grommets, 9915 Robo Thunder
Control Award: 8045 Gromit’s Grommets

Motivate Award Nominees: 417 S.K.I.D, 3526 Marlbots, 4962 Rockettes, 8176 Steelhead, 9879 Root Negative One, 10247 Trinity BaCoNeers
Motivate Award Winner: 3526 Marlbots

PTC Design Nominees: 4717 Mechromancers, 5795 Back to the Drawing Board, 6299 ViperBots QuadX, 10092 Green.Griffins, 12527 Fast Dragon, 12537 Gearing Wings
PTC Design Winner: 6299 ViperBots QuadX

Rockwell Collins Innovate Award Nominees: 2856 Tesseract, 3595 Schrodingers Hat, 7013 Hot Wired, 8815 Iron Eagles Silverbot, 10060 Klamath Coyotes, 10092 Green.Griffins
Rockwell Collins Innovate Award Winners: 3595 Schrodingers Hat

Connect Award Nominees: 4628 Suit Bots, 5714 Shambots, 7209 Tech Hogs Robotics, 8651 Wait For It…, 8908 Robo Mojo, 11121 Fishy Business, Inc. (FBI)
Connect Award Winners: 5714 Shambots

Think Award Nominees: 3491 FIX IT, 6510 CyberSharks, 6990 Static Void, 7172 Technical Difficulties, 8404 Quixilver, 8668 Error 404: Team Name Not Found
Think Award Winner: 6510 CyberSharks

Inspire Award Nominees: 2856 Tesseract, 3491 FIX IT, 8471 The Ducks, 8668 Error 404: Team Name Not Found
Inspire Award Winners: 3491 FIX IT

​https://www.reddit.com/r/FTC/comments/66xjao/info_ftc_houston_worlds_awards/