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by Ann Balaban, Senior Member
The idea for a BEST competition originated several years ago when two Texas Instruments engineers, Ted Mahler and Steve Marum, were serving as guides for Engineering Day at their company site in Sherman. Together with a group of high school students, they watched a video of freshmen building a robot in a class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The high school students were so interested that Ted and Steve said, "Why don't we do this?"
With enthusiasm, the North Texas BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) was born. In 1995, the regional final, Texas BEST, became an annual event. Today the competition reaches 6000 students over 20 states and has two regional finals with a third planned for 2005. The Dallas BEST competition will be Saturday, October 30, from 9 to 4 pm at The University of Texas at Dallas. And again this year STC will be participating.
You may remember that last year, the team from Austin Academy middle school did their oral presentation at our November meeting and brought their robot. That team place third at Texas BEST--the highest a Dallas team has ever placed. This year the Texas BEST competition has moved to SMU on November 13. It's open to everyone.
In the BEST process, each team designs and builds a radio- controlled machine to accomplish a defined task. Each team is given the same material to build the robot. In addition to this the teams form a company to promote their robot and write their documentation. Every team is required to do a project notebook.
Last year, Lone Star sponsored the project notebook competition. Kathlyn Auten and I presented a course on How to do a Project Notebook to students from 28 teams. Judges from the chapter evaluated the notebooks and presented first, second and third place awards. The judges also provided valuable feedback to the teams. Other STC members served as game-day judges and Judy Glick Smith presented at the awards ceremony.
I did warn the judges before they started that these were middle- school and high-school students and not professionals. Comments from the judges included things like "I can't believe that high-school kids did this"; "this is amazing!" As a game-day judge, Judy Glick- Smith and Kathlyn Auten were so impressed that they wanted to be included in next year's program.
The three award winners for the notebooks were:
1st place - Austin Academy Middle School
2nd place - J.J. Pearce High School
3rd place - Lincoln High School
Lone Star will sponsor the notebook competition again this year. Judging will be Thursday, October 28. If you want to be a judge or volunteer for the event, please contact Ann Balaban, annb@ti.com or Kathlyn Auten, kathlyna@ti.com.