First impressions and unboxing First Lego League: Into Orbit 2018

Hi there. I just thought I'd make a really quick video about First LEGO League 2018. We have just received the FLL Into Orbit box, and if you were on our Facebook page, you would have seen us do a live unboxing. Uh make sure you check the description. Uh check our profile page for uh the Facebook page, and then you'll be up to speed with all the stuff that we do in Creator Academy. So, um let's have a look at the contents of the box. Okay, here we have the uh friction pads, which are great for keeping our items on the tables. Now, here are our non-numbered bags. And if this is the first time you've done First LEGO League, uh you'll have a whole bunch of bags with numbers on them. For example, here's five. Uh but then there are also some bags that don't have numbers on them. And then uh they're usually used for a whole bunch of different models. Ooh, there's a another really cool piece in here. I want to show you. Yeah, this is a massive axle. It's about 30 odd modules long, maybe 36 modules long, 32 modules. Uh but uh when you're creating uh your FLL models, you try to make it a team building uh effort because uh when you have an FLL team, sometimes you might divide the team up into builders and coders and planners. Um uh and what we'd like to do is after a couple of weeks of doing some uh team work exercises, uh we would uh get together to build these FLL uh models together. And here we have some unnumbered bags, uh which is sort of like in the middle of the big table that you might have in your classroom, uh which turns into a bit of a communal kind of area where you can uh grab the pieces that you need. Uh and it's great to uh have some banter and talk about the models as each pair or each uh team of three uh inside your actual team is building the models. So, here before we move on to the other bags, we have um some balls here. Uh what I've noticed about these is they're a lot larger um uh and maybe slightly more awkward to hold on to uh if you started off with uh say the education robot, the basic robot that you build with EV3, uh it's going to be very difficult to manipulate this ball um uh in a uh robust kind of way uh because the kind of uh manipulating arm is very small, uh and holding this ball um is quite challenging. You need to be able to uh have some sort of claw that might be big enough to hold on to it. Uh it has to be very accurate. Or you might want to sweep it into uh some sort of uh want to dribble it. You might just have a a C-shape in front of your robot or on the side of your robot as an attachment, and you dribble it uh to and fro to where you need it to go. I haven't read the rules yet, but I'm going to definitely uh read up on the rules and uh analyze all the different objectives along with my class, of course. I don't want to take everything apart now. Uh I want to make sure that my students um enjoy opening these models up and also uh putting them together and going through the objectives together. Another thing that's really cool is uh this bow, this large bent uh piece with teeth in the middle. Um so, we're looking at some curved uh gear racks, uh which would make some really interesting models. Uh and I love having just interesting little mechanics to uh be sprinkled throughout the FLL maps, and really inspires the students as they're building. And then we've got some flexible hoses as well. And then the rest of them are just, you know, beams and system parts. So, I'll put these away, and let's go to the next bag. Here we have bag one. So, um there are 10 numbered uh lots of bags in the kit. Uh and if you have 10 students in your team, which is the maximum number of students you can have in an FLL team, then you would probably assign one uh one number for each student, and uh they would use the instructions that are on the FLL website to uh build the model uh that they're assigned to. Uh here we have an astronaut uh and some interesting parts in here. Um Whole bunch of gears and beams. And uh more astronaut parts. So, this must be some sort of space station uh kind of storyline. Um uh of course, the topic is Into Orbit. So, uh it'll be really, really interesting to see how they expand on the Mars missions uh that comes along um that came along with um uh the original kit, of course, as an expansion. Um uh but still, it's great to follow on from that Mars theme because we were working on that last term. Uh so, this would be a a great kind of extension on that. Okay, so this is bag lot number two. So, number one and number two, both the bags look like uh they're quite densely packed models. Um uh about average size um uh objectives. Um I won't crinkle the bags too much because it makes quite a lot of noise for this uh we're I'm not wearing the wireless camera today. I mean, wireless uh microphone today. Uh but something I really want to show you on uh bag number two is that there is a um red gear part, this red gear uh with a smooth hole in the middle. Uh most gears usually have a cross hole for the axle to spin the gear. Uh having a smooth uh circular hole in the middle means that this gear can rotate independently of the axle. Uh I've seen a lot of this in the gearbox, in the transmission of the um Bugatti uh Chiron model. Uh it's a very complex piece of uh of gear, and I I I love seeing uh what they can uh do with this model uh and with this mechanic. Okay, so now this is probably the largest uh objective in the kit at the moment. It's bag number three. Now, bag three has a whole bunch of transparent uh container pieces, and I know what what um obstacle this is. Uh uh just to spoil it a little bit for you, there's a a bit of a containment facility for your astronauts. Not sure if your objective is to put astronauts into the facility or to take them out of the facility, but um uh that's the kind of model uh that uh objective that this is going to make. There's a lot of very, very robust uh square frame pieces, a lot of um cylindrical pieces as well. Uh this looks like the largest model. You'll probably want to give it to your most talented builder, uh just so that um uh everybody finishes around about the same time towards the uh 1-hour mark of your lesson when you're doing your uh team building. Uh but yeah, model number three looks like it's a doozy. Five bags, that's a lot of stuff. Okay, bag number four um uh is two bags, and uh lots of small, fiddly little pieces. Uh I haven't seen uh the models as I said earlier, but I think uh that this would be quite challenging as well, quite fiddly. Uh there's a lot of uh one-sided gears, and um uh and a lot of other axles and and beams. So, uh and connectors. There's stacks and stacks of connectors. I wonder if uh these connectors are shared with any of the other models, but um uh if not, then uh uh number four looks like it's quite a densely packed model. Someone older with uh stronger fingers would probably uh be best suited to build this model. Bag five, very similar to number four. There's some really nice purple bricks in here. Uh if you're a fan of making uh really flashy, awesome-looking robots uh for your FLL matches, then having some extra purple bricks will definitely set your robot apart in a future uh FLL match. Uh and there's lots and lots of axles and connectors in here as well. Uh when you're building FLL, you you can never have too many axles and connectors, so um that this is uh uh going to be fantastic uh as an addition to any school that wants to um build bigger and better FLL uh robots. I'm really tempted to get a second box of Into Orbit, actually, because uh there's a lot of really great parts in here. Uh there's a lot of system bricks in number five. Uh so, uh the younger students in your team will probably be able to build it, uh but you'll probably need to pair them up with someone older. Uh there is quite a lot of parts here. Uh it's probably the uh third largest uh bag in the set. Here we have bags six, seven, and eight. Uh these are all very, very small uh objectives. So, uh these would be uh good for uh some of the uh decoders or the planners uh in your team who are probably not so um uh keen on building, or someone who is a bit slower in building, they can take any of these bags or maybe one of your really talented students or your your your top two or three students can pair together to to build these ones really really quickly. So, number six in particular has a lot of transparent circular pieces. I'm not sure if they are objectives that you need to collect or maybe they're marker of some sort. Either way, lots of great pieces all around. And finally, we have eight, nine, and 10. So, eight is probably the smallest. Someone who's really really quick with some of the models could probably build eight as well at the same time. Lots of little bits, but probably not not too much of a challenge. Nine and 10 also, if you have less students, maybe if you have six or seven students in your team, then you can probably hand these to the students who build really really quickly. Those are all the bags. With the map, I will provide a link to visit the FLL site to see the the map when it gets released. I don't want to unveil it now. I want my students to be able to cut it open and unroll it on the on the mission table. I think it's really important for them to feel like they're starting something new and and have that kind of involvement in this mission. So, I'm not going to take any of the bags apart, but we will be making more videos and especially with our dry runs and things like that. I'm sure it's going to be very very exciting. So, thanks very much for watching our unboxing of Into Orbit in 2018. See you later. Keep on creating.