Customer Reviews

First LEGO League: The Unofficial Guide

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Oh how I WISH I had this book three years ago when I started my team. It covers just about everything you need to know about starting and keeping a First LEGO League team. From basic teamwork strategies to building and programming tips and tricks, this book has it all. It is the perfect compliment to the official coach's guide provided by FLL. It's informative and easy to read without being either dumbed-down or over your head.

I highly recommend this book and I'm going to keep my copy table-side every season. Thanks James and Jonathan for putting together such a great resource!

FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a program for middle-school age children to explore robotics and a global theme that has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon involving thousands of children and adults. While that sounds very impressive, it's also very intimidating. With so many people already involved, how can a new person start a team? Is there a right way? How can a team grow and succeed?

FIRST LEGO League: The Unofficial Guide, by James Floyd Kelly and Jonathan Daudelin, is an excellent introduction to FLL for those wanting to start a team. Going through a step-by-step formula, the book explains everything about FLL from information about the program itself to starting a team and competing.

Every step is almost exhaustively documented - I say almost because the writing style is far from exhausting. The books voice is a very relaxed one, much like a tour guide that really enjoys talking about his tour route. Such points as fundraising and team management are covered in the book, which are very important yet not really mentioned anywhere else.

Building the team is a large component of the book, but so is building with the MINDSTORMS system, and a majority of the book is devoted to building and programming robots. Again, the text is engaging and step-by-step, showing how and more importantly, why a process or build method is advantageous. One inadvertent side effect of reading this is realizing what a successful team has to know - while my respect for FLL competitors is high, the Unofficial Guide gave me a much higher appreciation of the work needed to make a quality team.

And I guess that's the best way to describe this book - it's a quality book that I strongly recommend. For a group wanting to form a new team, this will be an invaluable resource to guide the kids (and adults) to competition. For those who have been in FLL, this book is also good because it has some nice tips and advice - the sidebar about test driving a robot on page 170 is a great piece of advice to both new and experienced teams!

And it has me wishing I could start a team...

This book is a must have for all the First LEGO League teams, and their coaches.
Although I'm an expert on LEGO MINDSTORMS, I still consider this book good value for money, it contains a lot of expert tips and tricks in getting your team organized and well set for the tournament. The easy writing style is even for non native English readers good to read. The layout is comfortable, and the side notes are a real added value.

The first chapters handle some background that is good to know, to make the team enthusiastic about the FLL games.
Chapter 4 contains a downloadable fundraising letter that shows that FLL goes beyond playing with LEGO robots, it also explains how to do business in real live.
Then the chapters about managing the team, is a must read for new coaches, but also experienced managers could learn form it.
The technical chapters, near the end of the book, handle a lot of tips and tricks on how to improve your LEGO robot and its program. I consider that many teams still can learn from these chapters. During several FLL finals, I was present as a "technical first aid doctor" for the teams that ran into "unforeseen" problems. I'm sure with this book at hand those problems would not have occurred.

This book really handles FLL form start to end, and encourages you to participate in the Fist LEGO League.

There is something for all FLL teams, both rookie and veterans in this book. Also, if you are checking out FLL and trying to decide if you want to begin a team, this is the place to get the information necessary to make that decision. I have been involved in FLL for over 6 years and I found helpful information as I read through FIRST LEGO League: The Unofficial Guide.

All new FLL teams need this book. The whole program is laid out clearly, with not only necessary information, but also with much helpful additional information. There is so much to learn in FLL and this book will guide you from how to start a team, how to do fundraising, how to handle team meetings, how to do basic robot buidling and programming, how to tackle the research project and much more, then onto what to expect at a tournament and beyond.

The format of this book is easy to read and understand. Additionally, it is laid out in such a way, that you can easily find the topic you need or you can choose to start at the beginning and read all the way through.

You will not be dissapointed by this book.

Being new to FLL, this book gave me the structure to start my own FLL team and gave great NXT robot ideas.

This is a great book for new coaches looking for advice on how to manage a team. But since it is written in a kid-friendly manner, it should also serve as an invaluable reference for rookie team members wondering where to begin. Veteran teams will benefit from this book as well, as it covers advanced building concepts for managing attachments and vehicle alignment.

The authors have presented the content in a well thought out and informative way without giving away any mission solutions - so I applaud them for that. I'm now a third year FLL coach and am presently preparing for the up and coming season so this book could not have arrived at a better time. I only hope it survives the onslaught of my ten member team of 5th and 6th graders. :)

David Levy
Virginia USA

I second the previous reviewer's opinion: Not worth the money.

As a matter of fact, one can find most materials on web. Although this book contains some good ideals, the authers didn't elaborate them, such as chapters 10 and 11. Pictures are not very clear. People buying this book are either new coachs or parents of new students. If they could figure out how to implement those ideas, they would find the book too basic.

That said, this book only worth 2 stars.

This is the best resource for First Lego League (FLL). The authors go through every aspect of FLL, from forming a team to the tournament and beyond. They describe and give you ideas about the robot game, research, teamwork, and technical judging. The book never shows you how to build any robots or attachments and never tell what you should do; they only give you ideas that you may chose from . . ., which is a good thing. FLL states "The kids do all the work" and the book stays true to that.
The book has sections for team members and sections for coaches (even though kids can still look at the coaches section) and is a great resource for rookies and veteran teams.

Over all, you should get this book if you want great info and ideas for you team!

This is a must-have book if you plan to participate in any LEGO robotics competition. The book is a comprehensive guide from finding equipments to building and programming techniques. This book has so many tips and tricks that will help you to do well in the competition. For example, the book shows me how to brace my design, how to position the robot precisely so that it will hit the target, and how to help the robot to self-align itself, just to name a few.
The book is written clear and concise. It only took me 2 days to read the whole book. I use this book to prepare my team for the Spelman Computer Science Olympiad. My team only has a week to prepare for the competition and, thanks for this book, we won 3rd place in the robotics competition.

I am running an FLL team this year for the first time. All of my team members are also in their first year. This has been a very useful resource for overall design, team management, etc. And the discussion of the ball as a rear wheel was useful to our design.