News

11/15/13 - SA BEST students, this is for you! The game teamis looking for some student feedback on the game and on if it helped further your knowledge related to the game theme. Please take a few minutes and take this survey. I'm told that you'll have a chance to win a robot kit, t-shirts and other stuff.

11/13/13 - Texas BEST was a blur. All the SA BEST teams did a fine job. UET (below) was able to take home the top prize - they won the BEST Award. St. Mary's Hall played in the wildcard. UET and Lee both reached the semi-finals. Alamo Home school, Lutheran HS, Navarro HS, and Stacey HS all had good showings as well. Acomplete list of the awards fpr SA BEST teams is:

• United Engineering and Technology Magnet: 3rd place, Most Elegant; Best Exhibit and Interview; 1st place, BEST Award.
• Robert E. Lee High School: 3rd Place, Exibit Design and Construction.
• Saint Mary's Hall School: 3rd place, Best Web Page Design; 3rd place, Most Robust.

11/5/13 - Team Pictures? Yep, we've got those up. Game Pictures? Yes, those too!

There were a couple nice articles/stories in the news - One in the Express-News and a Beamer's Rant (well, he was really raving). Check 'em out.

11/3/13 - Congratulations to all our teams for the tremendous effort in yesterday's robotics competition. Below is a summary of the results for the robotics competiton, the BEST award, and our other awards. It is quite impressive that the level of doumentation for the notebooks, the polish on the presentations, and the effectiveness of the exhibits seems to get better every year. All teams should be extremely proud!

San Antonio BEST Award Results:

1. Saint Mary's Hall School*
2. United Engineering and Technology Magnet*
3. Robert E Lee High School*
4. Lutheran High School of San Antonio*

Competition Results:  

1. Robert E Lee High School*
2. United Engineering and Technology Magnet*
3. Stacey High School*
4. Saint Mary's Hall School
5. Alamo Home School*
6. Navarro High School*
7. Lutheran High School of San Antonio*
8. John Marshall High School

* teams advancing to Texas BEST from SA BEST

Other Awards:

• Founders Award - 
  1. St. Anthony Catholic High School
  2. Holy Cross High School
• Most Robust - Stacey High School
• Good Lookin' John Wigand Most Photogenic - Stacey High School
• Best Table Display and Interview - Lutheran High School of San Antonio
• Most Spirit and Sportsmanship - Navarro High School
• BEST T-shirt - The STEM Academy at Nimitz Middle School
• BEST Use of Game Theme - Judson Early College Academy
• Blood, Sweat and Duct Tape - Krueger School of Applied Technologies
• SAME Award - Spring Branch Middle School

A summary of the seeding results and semi/final results are available as well as the total scores from the BEST Award competition..

More pictures will be coming during the next few days.

10/13/13 - Half-way there teams - just two more weeks to demo day and three until the contest. Do you have your strategy down yet? If you haven't found this excel inventory/scoring sheet you should really have a look. The rules are quite complicated, and the score sheet will help you to validate your approach (and the way that you've read the rules.) You've been keeping up with the Q&A, right?

Do you have music that you'd like to suggest for game day? Shoot me an e-mail with your suggestions (please include your team name/number) and we'll see if we can add the song.

9/29/13 - We hope that teams are making good progress. Remember that you can always contact us for help/advice/emotional support.

Below is a random picture from kickoff; more pictures are available.

9/15/13 - Kickoff is this Saturday (9/21). We'll do some introductory kit training (primarily for new teams) in the morning from 10:30 to 11:30 and then Kickoff will start at 12:30 (so teams that trained in the morning can grab a quick lunch). This will all take place at the University Center at St. Mary's University. We expect to be finished with everything (meeting, kit pick up and game demo) by about 3:00 pm.

Below are a couple quick notes on kickoff:

• Please bring a vehicle large enough to take the complete kit - what you will be receiving includes several 2 ft x4 ft sheets of plywood, some PVC pipe cut to 5 ft long, and a box that is roughly 20x20x8 inches in addition to the box that contains your returnable kit.
• Please bring students to kickoff, but be mindful that we have 36 teams signed up and a room that holds a few hundred people for the kickoff meeting. Students will have a chance to see the field after the kickoff meeting,

9/8/13 - A quick update with kickoff less than two weeks away! Software training is on Saturday 9/14 at 9:00 AM at St Mary's University in the Moody Life Building, Room 102. At this meeting, we will hand out the return kits to those teams that indicate they are coming to the meeting. The kits are necessary so that you will have the Cortex and other components on which to train. Teams should bring a windows-based computer on which to install the software – you must have administrative privileges on the computer for the software to install properly. Because space is limited, there can be no more than three persons from a team in the room at a time (that is, a teacher and two students, or three students). It is possible that we will relax this limit if only a small fraction of the teams plans to participate in the training. We will be working with EasyC which requires an individual license key that we will provide. You can actually download and install it now and use a 30-day trial if you are putting it on a computer that has not previously had the software installed.

We'll still do some overview training just before kickoff on the 21st, but we won't have time to go into any software detail at that point, that's why we're doing it early.

Sponsors

SA BEST appreciates the contributions of all sponsors, but would particularly like to recognize

for their contributions to all  BEST hubs through their Yes Program