I am currently a sophomore this year and recently joined my school’s robotics team on November 4th. Upon joining my team as the notebooker, I found out that since late August, my team has done only one notebook entry. They took several photos along the way to November, but it is nothing substantial. Now, I understand that my notebook will not be at the full potential that it can be this year because I am new and joined mid-season. However, I need help with what to do. Should I write an explanation in the beginning of my notebook stating that I’m new and was not present for the first three months of my team’s building? I was planning on stating this and then providing the pictures as well as the context to the pictures, and then beginning my actual entries. I feel very confused for what to do, any help would be greatly appreciated! I have my first competition on the 16th too…
hi hi! I’m a team captain as well as a notebooker (although it is my first year doing notebooking officially) for my robotics team! To answer your question, if your team did not provide a lot of material for you to begin with, you might just have to drag it out of them. what I mean by this is to ask them for a basic summary of what they did with the robot and try to come up with dates that make sense for meeting logs. when it comes to images you might want to build extremely basic parts of your pre-existing robot and take pictures of those! what I mean by this is that if you are writing a page on your drivetrain, try to build (and connect) a gear and a wheel and take a picture of that, acting as if it is an in-progress picture. check with your team for accuracy as well! hope this helps!
Think of everything you can do to do that moving forward, and explain that you were absent from the first few months.
To explain the progress in the first few months, make sure you have absolutely all the pictures and if you have multiple pictures of a mechanism in different stages put those in and explain the changes.
You also might wish to have a backup notebooker, as whilst I don’t know your schedule for working on the robot, it seems unlikely you could be there every time the robot is being worked on
Thank you so much for your response. My team didn’t provide a lot of material but I managed to get a bunch of photos (most dated) from them. They didn’t provide a lot of explanation to them, but I’ll figure it out somehow . Anyways, I was planning on setting aside a bunch of pages after the entry I did today to fill in for the time I wasn’t there. Although it won’t necessarily be in order, it’ll still be there, and I’ll just explain that to the judges. Thank you once again!
Hi! I meant to reply to this and accidentally posted it to my general comment by accident, so I’ll repost it here.
Thank you! I have a bunch of photos/info from them. I already started my notebook (I just finished page 13 after nine hours of work today ) and I didn’t leave blank pages in the beginning to do this with, so I guess I’ll just leave a ton of blank pages between my last entry and where I plan to do my next entry so I can fill it in. Of course, I won’t be able to make like forty entries since there aren’t that many photos I have to work with and I don’t have the space and time for that, but I’ll do my absolute best.
Also, as the notebooker I can only attend two out of our three weekly meeings, so I usually just text those who were there for information that I missed.
My team actually had a designated notebooker before I came, and he is still in our team, but he didn’t really do anything, so I don’t have anyone to be a backup notebooker.
My tips are to include your complete design process, that is what the judges are looking for. In my notebook, I included what code goes with what design, and how they work together to complete a steady robot. if your team already has a designate notebooker before you came and they are not helping, suggest ideas and then explain how you could improve your team’s scores with you notebooking
. Anyways, I was planning on setting aside a bunch of pages after the entry I did today to fill in for the time I wasn’t there. Although it won’t necessarily be in order, it’ll still be there, and I’ll just explain that to the judges. Thank you once again!
) and I didn’t leave blank pages in the beginning to do this with, so I guess I’ll just leave a ton of blank pages between my last entry and where I plan to do my next entry so I can fill it in. Of course, I won’t be able to make like forty entries since there aren’t that many photos I have to work with and I don’t have the space and time for that, but I’ll do my absolute best.