6 things to do with your robotics team during the offseason

We agree, there is nothing like the excitement of the competition. Both preparations for the challenge and the competition itself are moments that every single FLL, and other robotics competitions team member out there will always remember.

Suddenly, offseason arrives. Team members need to go back to school, the code fades away, and the team t-shirts go back to some shelf inside the closet.

Today, we want to give you 6 ideas for activities to do during the offseason to keep the FIRST Lego League, FTC, and the FRC spirit alive. Today, we want to offer you the possibility to use this time to acquire more tools, to be better prepared and to be the winner of next season’s challenge. All without neglecting your current school activities.

So, want to know 6 things to do during the off-season of the FIRST Lego League and other robotics competitions? Pay attention and start preparing your EV3 brick; it might be more than useful for a few of these options below.

It is always good to take a deep breath and analyze what happened during the latest challenge. What were your strong points? Where are your main weaknesses located?

A good idea might be to re-do the Autonomous challenge, for example, now taking more time to pay attention to details, to delve deeper into the code and to analyze what is the best way to accomplish this challenge in the shortest period of time possible.

The stressful season is over. Use this time to re-bond with your teammates. Get together, talk about your expectations, your frustrations, your highlights and your evaluations of the latest FIRST Lego League Challenge.

Having an openhearted chat over a good slice of pizza can always help you to arrive at the next season more prepared and to understand exactly how to work better as a team. Don’t forget that what we discover is more important than what we win!

There are many amazing projects you can do in order to practice and progress. Just to give you an example, here you can see some outstanding projects to be done with the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 (Did you know that CoderZ is compatible with LEGO Education’s EV3?).

Part of the research is reaching out to other teams and sharing experiences with each other. In the spirit of friendly competition, the possibility of helping out another team like yours is always an amazing possibility.

Offseason opens a huge opportunity for FLL team members to learn new things that will be extremely useful for them not only during the next challenge, but also for their entire lives.

CoderZ is offering a great possibility. CoderZ is offering all FLL teams full access to the online learning environment and to their Coding Robots course during the entire offseason. To register, just click here and give all team members the opportunity to learn, code and program cyber and real robots.

Go out and meet people! Discover the new products that have appeared to help you get new skills. Meet the new opinion leaders in the robotics world. Go out and look for sponsorships from different companies that love robotics competitions as much as you do.

Doing some outreach work it is always helpful, and using the time you have during the offseason, might be extremely beneficial.

You can try by searching on Twitter for the hashtag #outreach together with the famous #omgrobots and #FLL, for example. There, you’ll for sure to see more than one interesting opportunity for your robotics team.

A clear mind will give you the possibility to plan in a better, more effective way. Take advantage of this “dead” time to organize your thoughts, divide tasks and analyze strengths and weaknesses.

When you have a goal, and a clear road map, it becomes easier to achieve it. Plan, organize, design and choose the best path. This way, you can give yourself and your team the chance to be next challenge’s winners.

If you are not part of an FLL team and you still want to try CoderZ out, just click here and receive a 5-day free trial.