​Today we mostly did programing on Virtual World. The first world in programing was called Palm Island. I think it was called Palm Island because it has a lot of palm trees and is an island. In Palm Island I got to mission 4 where I pushed lobster traps in the water. I got to do Ruins of Atlantis also because I did Palm Island already. Ruins of Atlantis’s goal was to collect coins and diamonds. It was more challenging to do Atlantis.
Sloane
 

Today we sorted pieces and made worked our drives. Me and Sloane made a better drive than our last one. It was better than the last one because it was more stable when we used the large chassis corner connectors.
Paige
Today I learned about the driver controls, the Arcade and Tank drive. Apparently you can have different controls on the same drive. I like Tank drive better because I had more practice with it.
​We were all adding lifts to our drives. I was supposed to make a double reverse 4 bar. Raihau had to make a 6 bar. I had some troubles, though. I had to make three different ones and the last one was the one that worked.
Seizo

Today we built the third Squared Away field. I did the green cube. It was a little bit hard, but after 5 minutes, I got the hang of it. We learned about how to set up the field and also learned about what we need for our robot like a traction link so the ball won’t fall out of the claw.
We also watched the starter video. After that we practiced driving the gear and chain robot. It was fun. I managed to get some balls in the cubes, but since there was no claws, we couldn’t do too many. But I know that it was a practice robot.
We worked on our own robot designs for Squared Away and made a description of what it's supposed to do. I did something that scoops up the balls and keeps it in the pyramid position. Also it had claws that pick up the cubes and put them in the corner or on the platform. Then I drew it, it was actually hard to draw it.
While we were planning our designs we learned how we should document it in our engineering log. For the engineering log, we all learned that we need to cross out mistakes with a line instead of scribbles and how to use all of the space on the page.
​Sloane, Raihau and Seizo

​July 12, 2019
We watched and discussed a VEX IQ tip video about Speed, Torque, and Mechanical Advantage. We also did a Speed and Torque matching worksheet. We built a robot out of sprockets and chains, then tested it on the VEX IQ Squared Away Game Field. 
Then we were doing an alliance together and our high score was 9 points. An alliance is when two teams work together to get a high score. We had a 1 minute timer and 2 people driving. The first person gave the controller to the other person between 35 seconds and 25 seconds. 

​Daniel and Kamalu

​Today we had a test on simple machines (inclined plane, screw, pendulum, wheel & axle, pulley, lever, and wedge).

We watched 5 videos about building tips for VEX IQ robotics. Then after the videos, we drove this cool robot. But Mr. Leong took out the cables to the arms because we were having driving practice not picking stuff up practice. We did two types of driving; tank, with both levers, and arcade, with only one lever. Then after, we learned about two ways to make the wheels move. The first one was gears, and the other one was sprockets & chains. We also looked at robots from like 2013-2019. The first ones (2014-2016) about 80% of the robots had gears but then as they got to 2017-2019 most of them had chains. The gear drives have more friction, so sprockets & chains is better, I think. So anyway, we got into two groups 1 group (Me, Kamalu, and Jeyton) made gears drive. And the other group (Liana and Paige) made Sprockets and Chains drive. We finished our drive and tested it out. It worked. But the problem with it was that it looked like a small valley. In other words, it was tilted. So to fix it we put two 2 x 12 beams under for support and it looked better.

After that, we practiced driving around the VEX IQ Squared Away game field with our drives.
 
Daniel and Leland

On July 10 we did a competition on who could make the tallest tower with paper and tape. Then when time was up, Leland and I got ours up to 63 inches, Jeyton and Kamalu’s was 4 ½ inches, and Ian and Daniel was 1 ½ inches. But the main point of it was practicing to collaborate, plan, build, and record everything in our engineering log page.

The second thing we did was make simple machines using VEX pieces. The simple machines were, lever, inclined plane, pulley, screw, pendulum, wedge, and wheel & axle. Then we had to create a machine by combining 2 of the simple machines to make our car go the furthest. We had an inclined plane with a wheel going down it, and it hits something to make a chain reaction, and the reaction makes our car go forward. Kamalu’s and Daniel’s was a really tall inclined plane, then a seesaw; the wheel went down the inclined plane, hit the seesaw; then the seesaw hit the car to boost the car. It was 2-1 other team’s way. Even though we got it farther. We went farther but we were a few seconds later. 

Then we coded on Virtual World and I got to mission 9 on Palm Island. There are 9 missions in total on Palm Island. And they get harder as you go.
​
Paige, Daniel, Jeyton 

Day 2 of practice, we learned part names of the VexIQ pieces. One of the parts we learned was called a “Worm Bracket”. Maybe it’s called a “worm” bracket because it has worm sized holes.

I learned how to program a virtual robot in Graphical RobotC. We coded Palm Island “missions” with a “Mammalbot” I don’t know why it’s called a  “mammal” bot. Maybe it’s as fast as a mammal. Maybe a Giraffe. But probably not. Because Giraffes aren’t that fast. Maybe a cheetah. 

Then we did our Robotics Bio. We had to write about what skills we brought to the team and what you are looking forward to. 
We learned about what an engineering log is and how we are supposed to write entries in it.
​
Daniel and Paige

sDay 1 of practice, we learned about the Manoa School Robotics Program. We learned the expectations for participating in the competitive teams. The expectations are we should be respectful; no rude comments, no bullying, and no backtalk. We learned about grit and made grit posters so when we feel frustrated, we would look at the posters and it would motivate us to keep trying. Grit basically means to never give up. We also learned routines like signing in when we arrive and cleaning up when we leave.
Leland and Kamalu
​
Coaches note regarding expectations: Students should also try to be at every practice and be focused.