The Kentucky
Student Technology Leadership Program
Racing to the Future Event
May 13, 2011 – Rupp Arena – Lexington, KY
The Event: Friday, May 13th 2011, groups of thousands of students, teachers, parents and staff descended on Lexington Kentucky’s Rupp Arena for the Kentucky State Student Technology Leadership Program’s (STLP) State Championship.
And what is STLP? The Student Technology Leadership Program (STLP) is a project-based learning program that empowers students in all grade levels to use technology to learn and achieve. It was established in 1994 by the STLP State Advisory Council, which is composed of teachers, students and community leaders. Student
designed projects, products and services are created to help the school and community.
The program is open to ALL students in all grade levels in every school (P-16) in Kentucky. Along with all of the student’s projects, several interactive displays were on hand to demonstrate how technology is applied in the every day world.
The “Racing to the Future” Program:
In 2010 we changed the program and had the students build and decorate a car. They were given three hours before the racing event to make their changes and race their cars. This year, along with all of the student’s projects, several interactive displays were on hand to demonstrate how technology is applied in the every day world. To improve the Racing to the Future event and bring a deeper educational value to the program, we allowed the students to purchase their own car months in advance (October 2010). This allowed them to design and decorate the cars over a longer period of time and to research what they wanted to do to make the cars faster. Students also had to document what they did to their cars to make them more competitive using Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) as their basis of explanation. This year’s STLP State Championship event required the student to submit those papers as part of their entry and their ticket to race. Concours and Design were judged by a panel of 5 judges that could award each of the entries between 1-5 extra points for their report, design of the car, detail and finish of the decorations and overall impression. The public was allowed to vote for the car they thought looked the best. These votes were combined with the judges points and the two highest totals were awarded 1st and 2nd place in each age group for Concours.
The racing program remained the same, double elimination brackets, first to the finish line wins and entries were arranged by age groups, Elementary, Middle and High School. But this year we switched to the Auto World drag race components that included a Xmas tree starting line and a finish line sensor with indicator lights showing who crossed first. And a new twist was added with this system, a foul light! Anyone who jumped the start before the green light came on, fouled out and was sent to the secondary brackets.
Starting from the front row, left: Jessica Abbott and Ginger Kinnard, Back row from the left, veteran event officials: Dan Gorman, Paul Shoemaker and Donnie Walker.
I can’t thank the crew enough!
This event would not be what it is without their dedication and hard work!
This year we ran the racing operations under the new Auto World drag strip set up. The track was over 35 feet long! Twenty feet, seven inches made up the scale quarter mile (1/64th scale) and we had a 15 foot “cool-down” section with no power, to slow the cars down to stop. Each lane had 22 volts and one amp supplied by the AFX Tri-power packs and has power connections every 6 feet. Controllers were the new Auto World drag race controllers. We were on the floor of Rupp Arena again and were ready to fill those seats with cheering race fans!
Once again this year, Steve Russell at AFX Race Masters stepped up and provided a huge new incentive for the students! Great prizes! Steve and AFX donated 6 race sets that were given to the 1st and 2nd place finishers in each age group for the racing competition. We can’t say Thank You often enough Steve! You have helped sponsor and make this event something special every year!
Here we are getting the final adjustments made to the track and Ginger and Jessica are working up the registration and pre-race inspection procedures.
And of course we had to test everything out and made sure it worked! Dan and Paul are running a pair of S’COOL Buses making sure we have all the bumps smoothed out and the lights and finish line all work correctly. Hmmm….maybe we need to run a few more tests. Just to be sure! You can tell the students behind us are ready to race.
No sooner did the track testing begin, Donnie had his first students step up to register.
As the entries come in, we sign them up, place them in the brackets according to age group (Elementary, Middle and High School), we read the students written description of their car and what they did to make it faster, run it through tech inspection and place them on display for the public to vote on them. We had a very efficient crew and we had all the entries taken care of well ahead of the scheduled first bracket!
This was our first year to get High School entries and man did they do their homework!
The judges now began to work on examining the entries. This was a tough task! All the students put a lot of work into their cars and focused on different things. One student may have detailed the body, while another reworked the magnets and motor to get more performance. All of these variables were part of the judging. Students could earn up to 5 extra points to win the Concours/Design portion of the competition. After the judges were finished, the public could vote on which car they thought was best. Anyone could vote (1 time) and the votes were tallied and added to the judges’ results. First and second places in each age group were recognized and awarded ribbons. The results are at the end of this article.
So now that we have come through set up, registration and judging, I guess it’s about time to race. We would like to introduce to you, Kentucky’s Student Technology Leadership Program’s Racing to the Future™ student participants and their entries:
Elementary School Entrants
L-R: Tommy Carr, Keagan Duncan, Austin Goodman
L-R: Leah Hardin, Jackson Kennedy, Hayden Roy
L-R: Clark Looney, Tyler Tanner
L-R: Jared Williams, Matthew Yonts
Elementary School Racing Competition Photos
Middle School Entrants
Middle School Racing Competition Photos
High School Entrants
High School Racing Competition Photos
There was lots of great racing this year, but there was some even cooler stuff happening behind the racing scenes. All of the racers were shaking hands or high-fiving each other after they raced. Lots of congratulations and good sportsmanship was seen at all levels of the competition. The one person that I’ll always remember this year was Ashwin Balaji. Another racer had rebuilt his car and the magnets were in backwards. Because of the type of chassis he used, he couldn’t swap the axle around to fix the running direction. This racer was called to the starting line and was ready withdraw because his car wasn’t ready and he couldn’t swap it around fast enough. That’s when Ashwin asked a race official if this student could borrow one of his extra cars. The officials agreed to the swap and Ashwin even pointed out which car was the fastest for the student to use! That was so cool to see. And Ashwin didn’t even know the student, he just wanted to see him get to race. That was a great thing to see in the middle of competition!
2011 Racing to the Future Bracket Results
We had a great crowd again this year. We had people cheering from the stadium seats and loads of watchers walking by, stopping to look and then hang around for the duration watching all the excitement. Here are few pictures of the audience we generate and everyone stayed until the last race was run and all of the winners were announced. Truly a good time was had by all. The students really showed an in depth knowledge of how their cars worked and what they did to make them even more competitive. All of the entrants applied science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to describing their improvements from gear ratios to magnetic action on motors and traction applications.
Last and far from least, I would like to thank all of our sponsors:
Tomy AFX / Racemasters – Steve Russell
Auto World – Tom Lowe
Bud’s HO Cars – Rob Budano
Walther’s Life-Like Racing
Speed Inc.
And many thanks to all those that help support KY STLP and the great opportunities it provides to KY Students.
Thanks to Elaine Harrison-Lane, Director of KY STLP and to David Couch, Associate Commissioner, Office of Knowledge, Information and Data Services (KIDS) whose office coordinates KY STLP.
Big thanks to my crew! I can’t imagine any of this being done as well without your valued participation!
Dan Gorman – Race Official and “The Guy That Gets Them to the Line”!
Donnie Walker – Data Guru and Bracketologist
Jessica Abbott – Kept everyone focused and helped call the finish line results (which were really close!)
Ginger Kinnard – Photographer, gopher, and anything else we could come up with, she took care of!
And I’d like to thank my wife, Jill and my kids, Briana and Emily, for helping me test the track systems and listen to me rattle on about the “little cars”. Couldn’t do this with out their support!
We plan on making this bigger and better next year!
-Paul