Seaside Neighborhood School would like to wish the best of luck to all the teams competiting in South's B.E.S.T. next month.  We are excited to meet each of you and share in the joy of winning at our hub levels.  As we all meet and compete to be the Region's B.E.S.T., we look forward to developing new friendships, learning new skills and sharing a few laughs... gifts that will be with us through the next several years of B.E.S.T. competitions.

We look forward to seeing you all in Auburn!

We took a break mid-day with a mini-concert by Jimmy and the Kids outside the Field House before being recognized for our accomplishments at the awards ceremony.

We happily accepted sixth place for our robot performance, second place for our Project Engineering Notebook and first place for our website design.... yes, this same website you are viewing was the Best of the B.E.S.T. at the Emerald Coast Best.  We also took third place in the overall B.E.S.T. competition, earning us a trip to compete in the finals at Auburn in December.  You should have heard our fans scream as we received our awards.  We know the noise will be even louder as we compete against 49 other winners at the South's B.E.S.T. competition at Auburn in six weeks.

We hope to see everyone there as we show off our B.E.S.T.!

Here we go... the first official test drive on the surface of Mars.  Only drivers, spotters and mentors (and the paparazzi) were allowed entry, and the stories have already started traveling the sound waves.  After a couple of hours of practice in Pensacola on Saturday, we feel confident that SNS292 the MARSbot will perform to his task on Game Day.

Project Engineering Notebook writers spent the entire day Wednesday with the Build and Design Team documenting their every move.  They interrogated, I mean "interviewed", team members about the process from brainstorming, sketching ideas, prototype development, to building their living and breathing robot.  Writers documented all sketches and CAD drawings in photographs and scans for inclusion in the appendix of of their notebook.  The Project Engineering Notebook is a comprehensive writing requiring research, diligent note-taking, mission appropriate planning, trial and error documentation, etc., worth 30% of our score and is due to the judges next Tuesday, October 23rd.  Notebooks will be reviewed by the judges prior to Game Day in preparation for robot competition. 

Our robot is live!  Our Design and Build Team has been working overtime, even coming in on the weekends, to get our 'bot going.  His name is "292" and he is very excited about his place in the upcoming competition.  His official test drive on the competition floor is this weekend and we are eager to see how he measures up.  We have put our faith in him and we know he won't let us down.

We are seeing the beginnings of a fantastic display booth.  It has been in production for a few weeks, but the parts are coming together nicely and we are ready to see the finished product.

Our fund-raising committee had yet another productive meeting this last week.  They went off-campus to visit with a group of engineers, share with them our vision and gather resources for this fabulous project.  With every fund-raising meeting, they just get better and better at presenting.  This is a skill that will benefit them for years to come in their future educational and professional endeavors.

We reached out to our community again this week for assistance in making give-aways for our booth.  With the help of several neighborhing elementary schools, we have reached our goal.  We will be visiting with students at South Walton High School this week to recruit them into future B.E.S.T. competions.  We know they will see the excitement in our faces and want to be part of this challenge next year.

Keep an eye out on our website for lyrics and music to our original song!  It won't be long before our song hits platinum level...  okay, maybe not, but Mr. Ward has worked with students to write two wonderful original songs and will be recording them very soon for use in our oral presentation, in our display booth and on our website.  We plan to rock the house!

If you haven't yet made plans to attend the Emerald Coast B.E.S.T. competition on October 27, please do so now.  We need all the support we can get on Game Day!

They did it!  The Design and Build Team has brought our robot to life.  Yes, it is still a prototype, but it moves, it feels, and it's ours!  We wish we could show you what he looks like OFF the drawing board, but you'll just have to wait until competition day.  Trust us, it WILL be worth the wait!

Let's give a big robot high-five to the team members who took half of their vacation day on Monday to come in to the shop and work on our 'bot.  Thanks for all your hard work, guys and gals.

Our Community Outreach team worked with students from Rosemary Montessori Academy to make giveaways for our B.E.S.T. booth.  We'd love to tell you more about the giveaways, our booth and our theme, but we just can't let any of our secrets leak to our competitors.  Come support us on October 27th when all of our "classified" information will be revealed.

Our many thanks go out to Dr. Runnels for his time and his very generous donation to our robotics mission.  Our fund-raising committee met with him on Wednesday afternoon to present our school-wide competition project, their presentation complete with a PowerPoint slideshow, a video montage of past B.E.S.T. regional performances and a mini-tour of our own SNS BEST website.  After a thorough "show and tell" by our committee members, Dr. Runnels graciously offered his support in our "mission".  As a thank-you for his time, our students presented him with a signed portrait of the many fabulous smiles of SNS.

Dr. Runnels, your continuous generosity amazes us.  Thank you for all that you do for SNS!

What a productive day for the Build and Design Team!  They met throughout the day, each team presenting their prototypes to the other teams.  The prototypes were tested for functionality and rated according to pros and cons of each.  When the presentations were complete, each team reworked their prototypes to iron out the kinks before coming together again for testing.  The team will be meeting again on Friday to narrow their options before actual 'bot building begins.

We are excited to share our preparations and journey to Mars with you!