• SUMMER OF INNOVATION TOURNAMENT AND CLOSURE

    JUNE 21, 2012
     
                                                          nasa                    small eagle
     
     
    Sadly, all things come to an end, even our very excellent Summer of Innovation. June 21, 2012 marked the end of the third week and so we prepared to close our activities with a bang! There were several things planned for that day and they all happened concurrently.
     
    1- Robotics Tournament- Our campers had been working very hard on their robots. Mr. Grahmann and Mr. Correa had their hands full since most of our campers had never built a robot in their lives. It was exciting to see how well they performed, because all our campers were able to produce a working robot which was capable of completing at least two of the tournament's missions- and all within the space of three weeks! We are including the missions and rule book of the tourney so you can gauge the difficulty in the execution.
     
    2- Rocket Launching- Ms. Onia's kids were preparing to launch their rockets to see if they would survive the impact. All the rockets were supposed to deploy a parachute and the question was...will it open on time? There were many missions that ended on the roof, and others out in the Eagle's Nest. But happily, all the rockets were successfully launched.
     
    3- Door Prizes- Ms. Rosa raffled off door prizes at the beginning of the tourney and then again while we were waiting on the finals to begin. These ranged from a simple journal to model planes to Looney Tunes flash drives. Parents got into it as well, since there was a separate raffle for them!
     
    4- Pizza Party!- At 11:30 am 35 pizzas arrived, much to the delight of all our hungry guests! Everyone was able to have pizza and a drink. We had had frozen popsicles earlier in the day. It was hot, but we kept cool!
     
    5- The Media Was Here!- We were very happy to welcome HISD's media team, who came out to see our tournament and end-of-camp celebration. They took videos of the competition as well as the rocket launchings. They stated that it would be published by mid July. We'll be on the look-out for it!
     
    Like we said before, all things must pass, even cool ones like our camp. However, we were very happy to have had the opportunity to work with such an excellent group of students. We hope that they not only had a good time, but that they learned about survival, about space exploration, and about collaboration. We are very thankful to NASA for their support and encouragement these past two years. We hope that our relationship will continue to grow.
     
    Here are the missions and the rules for the Robotics Tournament: