Team Duct Tape was honored to be selected to represent FIRST Tech Challenge at this week’s Elliott Masie Learning 2011 Conference in Orlando.  TDT students joined Exploding Bacon’s FRC team and FLL Team Party Boss in a fantastic day that included an opportunity to meet with FIRST founder Dean Kamen, in the morning, along with FIRST Vice Chairman John Abele (who received the Masie Learning Center’s Lifetime Learner Award) and FIRST president Jon Dudas.

Later, all the FIRST students went on stage with Dean and Elliott Masie to talk a bit about FIRST and to see FIRST awarded a $25,000 Learning Gives Back Grant from Masie Learning.  And then the rest of the day was spent sharing FIRST with conference attendees, and enjoying some of the fantastic sessions.   We stayed long enough to enjoy a storytelling session with actor John Lithgow, too, which was the icing on the cake of a really amazing day!

Tonight some of our students head out to the  ASME-Florida West Coast Section November meeting,in Dunedin, to join up with FRC Team Thundercats to talk about this season’s challenge and FIRST in general. We’re really looking forward to it!

That and eventually getting our robot done!