Team Duct Tape held its first official pre-season meeting last week, a combination CAD education session and Kickstarter fulfillment session, to create the duct tape gifts promised to donors, as well as the gifts for our “Guess the Game” Game winners.   Both sessions went well!

This year’s pre-season meeting served as a refresher for last year’s students, and as an intro for a couple of incoming members, whom we’re excited to have on board.  Koen comes to us with some VEX experience, and Jacob, although new to FIRST,  plunged right in earlier this year at outreach events.

Next week, Jacob and Marissa will be representing TDT when they make an appearance on Daytime, with parent sponsor Learning is for Everyone, in a special back-to-school edition of the Channel 8 morning show (didn’t school just let out?!).  The segment they’ll be in is about homeschooling, and since Jacob and Marissa are two of our homeschooled students, they’re great examples of homeschoolers learning by doing, and how FIRST can be integrated into educational environments outside of brick and mortar schools.

Then sometime in the next couple or three weeks, with most of the parts in for our 3D printer, we’ll put that together.  We also hope to get in a cool local robotics facility tour, and a day of team building fun at a local YMCA.  So by the time kick off rolls around in a month (check out our countdown timer at the top right – it’s counting down fast!) , Team Duct Tape members will be ready to hit the ground running – fingers made nimble (and sticky!) by hours of duct tape construction, minds made sharp pouring over CAD instruction, and teamwork strengthened by working together on a 40 ft high ropes course.

Whatever the new season brings, we’ll be ready – for something!