A FIRST LEGO League team from Exeter, NH
“Light That Candle!”
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Welcome to the Team FUUSEion website!
Team FUUSEion is a FIRST LEGO League team from Exeter, NH. Some people call FIRST LEGO League (or FLL for short) a robotics competition, but it’s really much more than that.
Our team learns how to work together, how to manage our time, how to convey ideas, how technology impacts the world, and so much more, along with all the mechanical and programming stuff. And we do this all within the framework of Unitarian Universalism.
If you explore this site using the navigation boxes above you will learn a great deal about all these things, but we want to point out one thing right away: Team FUUSEion is about lots of things, but we are not about winning trophies. This is not to say that we don’t win trophies, but this is not our goal. In fact, when we set our team goals at the beginning of every season, we make it a practice of not including trophy goals. The goals we set are all internally focused, so we talk about the kinds of people and team we want to be, not the kind of hardware we want to put on our shelf. Sure, we’re very happy when we win something, and to see our hard work recognized by others, but we know the real value is what we become during the process.
11/12/11 -
Competition at UNH, with 15 other teams. Surprisingly, we won the 1st Place Champion’s Award! Our robot wasn’t so great with points, but all other elements went well, so we think it was our balanced approach that did it. We’re not about ‘trophies’, but it’s very nice to be recognized. Off to the State competition on 12/3.
Early November 2011 -
Getting ready for competition day 11/12 at UNH. Our robot isn’t scoring as many points as we’d like. Oh, well, we’re still learning a lot. Project is going pretty well, and we’re doing well focusing on Core Values.
October 2011 -
Team is putting in lots of hours getting ready for competition. With 10 members this year, it’s hard keeping everything organized. We started studying Bacon for our project, but switched to Pork Chops
9/2/11 -
This year’s challenge released. Looks like no more perfect scores - not that we ever got one! Starting regular team meetings.
8/7/11 -
The team hosts a service at church, presenting a skit with a ‘mystery’ in it, and giving the younger church members a ‘spiritual happy meal’ that includes a mystery box they weren’t supposed to open until they got home. All but one of them made it out the church door without being opened!
July-August 2011 -
The team will be hosting a special summer service at the church, August 7th. The topic is ‘The Limits of Knowledge’ (Can you tell one of the coaches picked that one?). We’ll be doing a theme-related skit for the young folks and working with them on a LEGO-based activity.
4/3/11-
Team FUUSEion attended the district conference and had a blast! We handed out lots of pamphlets on how to start an FLL team and did our skit, which was well received. The team even had a chance to visit the indoor water park attached to the hotel.
3/17/11-4/1/11-
The team gets ready for the NNED UUA Conference by tweaking our robot and practicing the skit we will do during the service our Minister Kendra Ford. We’re bringing 5 student members and 2 coaches to the event.
3/5/11 -
After a long winter’s hibernation, Team FUUSEion finally has its season-end party at Coach Frank’s house. We watched a cool Anime Movie called ‘The Place Promised in Our Early Days’ made some pizza, and watched our season-end video
January 2011 -
We start making plans to attend the Northern New England District (NNED) Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Conference in April. We hope to help other UU congregations start FLL teams.
September-December 2010-
Team FUUSEion was so busy with the 2010 Season that we didn’t do any web updates!
We participated in both the UNH local event and the New Hampshire State Championship. At UNH we placed second overall, a great showing by the team. Our name ‘didn’t come up’ during the award ceremonies at the State Championship, but we learned lots by looking at the other robots there - some were fantastic!
07/18/10-
Team FUUSEion runs a LEGO camp for South Church in Portsmouth! Full story here.
06/19/10-
Team FUUSEion welcomes two new team members - Turner and Macguire!
06/16/10-
Senator Shaheen (almost) looks at our robot in Washington DC!
See the story and photographic evidence here.
06/10/10-
Team FUUSEion heads to the US Senate! Or at least our robot does...
The fine folks at FIRST asked to borrow our robot so they could put on a demo at the ‘Experience New Hampshire’ event being hosted by Senator Shaheen in the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office building. Once again our robot is getting the star treatment. (And we’re not. Again. Ask us about the time we sent our robot to Oprah Winfrey’s magazine ‘O’ for a photo shoot. True story....)
06/03/10-
Team FUUSEion partners with the Green Sanctuary Committee at FUUSE on another project. This time we’re helping folks recycle their old computers.
Best Buy will recycle your computer for free (link here), but you need to remove your hard drive. Team FUUSEion has volunteered to remove the hard drives from folks’ computers, make them safe from prying eyes, and get them properly recycled.
05/23 and 05/27/10-
Team FUUSEion has it’s first meetings of the summer. This year, we’re trying something new - meeting over the summer so we can get more done!
And we welcome a new team member to the family - Aden!
5/13/10-
Coach Frank gets us our own web domain and starts going crazy with the web stuff.
The team starts looking at new logo designs.
