Any of you buys have creative ideas for a engineering notebook?
not sure about creative, but use pictures, and data, judges love both, use pictures of various stages of robot build, also take data of different things, for example, accuracy or how far your ball goes for different power settings
Make sure to include the design process and how it has applied to your decision making!
a creative idea would be to do it in first person, so from the robots point of view. It would make a very interesting journal 
Here is something the judges rarely see: proper spelling and grammar.
The Judges like to see different handwriting in the notebook(they like everyone to help with it). They like to see sketches and math in the notebook. My team has a typed up summary of the current robot with pictures in the front of the notebook.
You all have phones now, so take some darn pictures each time you meet to show the progress! (not just silly pics, useful ones of the robot)
The hard part seems to be getting teams to get these pictures from the camera into the notebook. Yes it requires the step of getting them printed, but many places make that easy if there is a Walgreens nearby if you are impatient and can’t do the cheaper mail order printouts.
A Binder plus a physical notebook so you can show more elements and have print outs is pretty common in our area now. Notebook handles the written material of the actual design process and the binder is for all other parts.
OMG!!! You are so right!!! My A team had an incredible notebook according to the judge who is a home inspector by day at our school’s tournament. The only reason they did not get the Excellence award was grammar and spelling. It was a blow to them, but that is life. My B team won it which which drove the knife into the wound even deeper.
At the last tournament we went to, something really funny happened. My B team printed the notebook but hole-punched it on the wrong side the morning of the tournament. They freaked out on the bus and did not tell me till we arrived. I just said that is life and you have to deal with it. They teamed up and met in the bleachers and re-wrote the whole notebook by hand, drew pictures, and organized it all. They were such nerds! Anyway they went on to win the Excellence award to my surprise. We cannot figure out why since my A team fixed off of their grammar and spelling. A team has a much better notebook, but B team’s rewrite must have won the judges over. Who knows. Both went on to win the whole tournament anyway.