I met Doede through TechBrick many years ago. He was our first translator (and continued to do so for many years.) We corresponded and spoke via phone as well. TechBrick helped with his initial work with FTC. He was tragically killed in an auto accident last year is missed by many.

Here is a note from Angela Wellink:

We miss him very much. This year we had a special award during the regionals: the "Doede ten Cate inspiratie award."  His family was there to hand out the award (see picture, with his shirt). A special moment for a special person. The children of Doede were also present at the FTC competitions where he was active and of course during the Benelux finals. He was a big inspiration for our team.

NXT Generation was inspired by the old team from Doede and thanks to him we were very successful (several first place finishes during regionals and Benelux finals and a innovation award at the World Festival in St. Louis and WIOC in Taiwan).

He taught us that participation is more important than winning and that you can accomplish more together than alone and above all have fun. His family has the same ideas and Silvie (his wife) and children are therefore strong enough to be able to bear this huge loss. I’m proud to continue our work in memory of him.
 

The Technicbots is an FLL team based in Plano,Texas. The team consists of 6 team members, 5 boys and 1 girl. There are one 5th grader and four 6th graders. They have been in FLL for 2 years and are looking forward to another good year.

They have won many awards, one of which is the Programming Award at the regional Championship tournament. The team also has participated in many youth engineering activities such as the Youth Engineering Fair (organized by CIE).

They are all from Chinese origin and are currently learning Chinese, its history, and its culture. The team feels honored to translate the documents and the webpage into Chinese to benefit the Chinese FLL teams, "It's a great pleasure," says Samuel, a team member.

Our team motto: "Try your best, never rest"

Note that the Tenchnibots provided our first directly translated page:
    NEW! Resource page IN TRANSLATED CHINESE
 

NXT Generation

NXT Generation started with the Climate Connection challenge, 4 years ago. Our team is not affiliated with a school, but to a foundation dedicated to the preservation of nature in our neighborhood. They generate the interest of the youth for nature by offering activities that appeal to them like engineering and science.

Our team motto: “We take part in this tournament, with true spirit of sportsmanship, celebrating science and technology, and the honor of our team”.

We have 2 women coaches and 9 team members in the ages of 9 through 15.

Senior Solutions will sadly be our last challenge!

Visit our Web Sites!

• www.wasven.nl/nxtgeneration
• www.facebook.com/nxt.generationwasven
• www.onsplatform.tv/nxt-generation

I used to be a team member at Free Access Team. I competed as team member at three challenges. Then I became a team mentor, after that I co-coached another team that my friend started in his garage. With that team, the Team Terradroide, we won the Brasilian Champion's Awards and Robot-Game Missions at the Open Europe in Dennmark.

Today I work with the FLL teams in Brasil to spread the program country-wide.

FLL in Brasil web-site: www.aprenderfazendo.org.br

DUTCH TRANSLATIONS BY: Tymen Kuperus

I am a teacher at Secondary Vocational Education ICT school in The Netherlands and AFOL for many years. Our school (www.drenthecollege.nl) is a regional partner and I am the main contact at it for the FLL. Our students, who are 16 and older, are using the missions as well and are helping teams to get started and are judging during the regional finals. The also compete in our school to each other to learn the rules and have fun with LEGO offcourse.

Beside that I am a hugh fan of LEGO DACTA (or LEGO Educational as they call it today) and have a informational website about it which can be found at www.ebricks.nl/dacta. It is still in Dutch, but maybe translated in English in a couple of months if there is enough interest for it.