Again my request has always been “tell us what preferred is worth” they told us. I am satisfied.
I will not require my kids to use bounded note books, I won’t stop them from trying. I still personally think they’re dumb and a waste of effort, however its not worth enough points for me to care any longer. They are no longer just dumb in my mind they’re trivial.
A couple of points.
To each, and all that.
I’m pleased they defined it.
I’m completely convinced by my day job that it’s not archaic, just yet.
I prefer the tremendous advantages of electronic collaboration such as is offered by this very site. Obviously, what we’re doing right now would not even be possible if we were exchanging paper.
But there are some uses of ink on paper that retain relevance.
For the moment, RECF is offering a bonus if our teams scribe legible marks on dead trees.
So, I’m in.
But again, “to each…” and all that.
this is not the bit i find archaic, i keep personal written notes. The insistence that it should be bound and signed i find old fashioned.
I still find hand drafted notebooks on dead trees more impressive, especially when the art work is well done. I just don’t agree that they are worth less in a three ring binder.
However, I am content with the current ruling, I had no illusions that the preference for bounded journals would go away they are obviously someones pet project. I simply wanted to know what that preference was worth.
It is now known and I can continue griping about the preferences of the old guard, and I will, because I can 
I guess I don’t see the problem you are referring to. Care to elaborate?
This change is understandable, but I still want more in terms of notebook rules.
Bound Notebooks have some notable issues that just make some notebook designers prefer something else, and few picky notebook designers that refuse it completely. THESE are the people most affected by this change, and I presume they aren’t even the target, but the supermentors are.
Although the idea of preventing extreme mentor involvement is a good one, I feel like it is straight up going too far to get the job done, if that is the only thing RECF desires when making this change. Sure I can’t think of a better option off the top of my head, but if it won’t work why do it?
People supporting this change do offer how the stretching term of bound notebooks being “preferred” has been a curse to so many around the world, and that we should be happy that it is now an objective penalty.
I suppose if I wanted to settle for this minor improvement, I would agree. Yes, it is better to have an objective penalty than being at the mercy of the judges’ moods. However, it still is really annoying to see more efficient methods and personal preferences be penalized for a reason that isn’t even the notebook designer’s fault, but the supermentors in our community.
Sure thing!
Many who argue against binders or most other alternatives to a bound notebook claim that either a mentor or parent could easily fake being a team member and write the notebook for them or the team could rearrange and remove pages, ruining the engineering process.
However, there are people that use the notebooks being argued against with this statement, but they don’t do any of these malpractices. There are people that do do these malpractices unfortunately, and they are the reason penalties like the one we are discussing happen. However, there are less of the latter. This is what I meant, where there are more people being punished (people who like alternatives to bound) for the actions of other people (supermentors and people who don’t follow the engineering process.)
Hope this helps
Wow some people have way more time on their hands than me.
I can barely make time for regular meeting and competitions let alone do the work for them.
I look at this the same way as I see people abusing social saftey nets. We should design the system to benifet as many people as we can and accept that a small precentage of people will abuse it.
The most grumbling I’ve seen on this is the lack of clarity. I do not think the RECF favors bound note books to descourage adult help, but they feel it’s an important skill, which is a whole separate controversy.
In certain places, judges prefer hand-written. In others, judges prefer printed. To get both, I’d just make one that’s online, then copy it hand-written. It’s a bit more work, but it’ll please the judges greatly(especially when they see two versions). When doing hand-written notebooks, we highly suggest buying VEX’s Engineering Notebooks, because of their impressive quality and they are incredibly durable. They have a total of 130 pages(which means a page number max of around 240-260), which should be good enough for a good quality version.
Rip I can’t see my last post to edit it, but here’s the link to VEX’s engineering notebook:
EDIT//: In my opinion, I think that VEX should also take the importance of an engineering notebook, and every year they should switch between preferring handwritten and printed to ensure that everyone practices both types. Plus, it would be pretty cool and fun to do.
Don’t like the preference for bound but thank you recf for making it clearly defined
At the Event Partner Summit there has been lots of discussion about this. I think this forum thread is missing one major point. It is that a hand written bound notebook is highly preferred.
Ok, to get this bonus…
Does it have to be hand written AND hand illustrated? meaning no pasting in pictures?
Only being worth 3 points doesn’t really seem to be worth that sort of effort.
What if I print out my pages and bind them? Does that give me 3 points?
From my impressions at the EP Summit (Not in any way official):
If you have 2 notebooks side by side - one is written and bound and the other is typed or hybrid in a 3-ring binder of equal value or quality, the bound hand written wins hands down.
The reasoning given in the specific judging meeting was that in real life the engineers who actually do design (not reports), do it in a written format in a notebook. It also comes down to intellectual property.
These are just my impressions from what I have gathered.
Personally it is going to take my teams a total philosophy change to get this done. We do hybrids and have had great success, but in order to get max scores… we have to comply
Again, just observations and thoughts
I will ask more today about pasting pics and the bound written vs bound typed
they can’t have it both ways… its worth three points, or it is required…
Granted if both note books contain equal contents that’s of course just mathematically correct that the 3 bonus points would push it above the hybrid or three ring entry.
Are any of the RECF actually engineers? Because I work for a major automotive manufacturer and all of our design work is electronic, that’s why we have CAD (computer aided design). For something they think is so important, it is not even flippantly referred to in college classes let alone taught. It will all come down to what competitors do in the “market place” if our competition switches to bound note books we may have to adjust to the new economics of the situation, but considering the last two world champion excellence awards were in three ring binders I feel there are many more variables in determining a winner than how we organize our dead trees.
Also, thanks for asking, its appreciated.
(As a side note, is anyone else having difficulty with this thread? )
Yeah there are a few. The one in charge of it so to speak is an engineer. Tarek was presenting. And I do agree with you. I just have to find a way to get my teams to meet the requirements at this point.
This would have been my interpretation of the “preferred” wording used before. All else being equal, a bound notebook wins over a binder, or handwritten over typed. The problem was that some EP’s took “preferred” to mean mandatory and would not accept anything else, while some completely ignored it. I am happy to see it assigned a specific value. I personally think that value should be smaller, but it is now a concrete number, and that is really all i could have hoped for.
I won’t make my team do anything. This is the sort of grown up decision they are all qualified to make.
If they are willing to exert the extra effort to produce a bounded note book than that is their choice, If they however decide the 3 points are not worth their time than that is also a valid choice.
College will be full of these choices. Do you finish that draft for English 101 or study for the physics exam? Do you complete your 4 hour long homework packet or just work on the problems you need practice on? Do you go to class today or spend that time studying for a final?
We should be focusing on skills that will help these kids survive college, the engineer drop out rate is insane and i think that’s something the RECF has lost sight of or has never been a priority. It’s as is they think that you leave Highschool and enter the workforce and skip right over the four years of intense work and dedication.
I am having difficulty. It is not loading my responses for long periods of time.