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The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, And The Ultimate Battle Of Smarts (2011)

by Neal Bascomb(Favorite Author)

3.97 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0307588890 (ISBN13: 9780307588890)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Crown

review 1: Neal Bascomb’s The New Cool is a rush of mechanical prowess and the exhilaration of competition.Through most of the story you are following the robotics team D’Penguineers from Dos Pueblos, California. The teams is lead by Amir Amo-Shaeer a teacher who is trying to form an amazing engineering branch at Dos Pueblos and then spread the love of engineering throughout the United States. For the first half of the novel Bascomb develops the reason the team is striving to be number one in the world. Faced with the set backs of the robot building process the team strives to create the toughest robot for FIRST’s new competition. The main issue I have with the first half is that it seems very dragged out. There is a lot more focus on Amir over the rest of the team. As soon as... more the team get’s within a few days though the competition’s intensity begins to kick up. Even being someone who has not been involved in robotics competitions before Bascomb’s writing really drew me into the excitement. From blow out scores to nail bite inducing scores the competitions never cease to amaze. The second half is really where this book shines. The book truly accomplishes what it set out to do. That was to shine a light on the amazing aspects of robotics competitions, to help spread the word to the rest of the world about the values and skills gained through robotics, and the value of teamwork.
review 2: Well researched and written, really captures the atmosphere, which I experienced firsthand (as a parent). This is about a "newbie" team participating in the FIRST international robotics challenge in 2009. It happens that my son was a senior at this school in 2006, the first year his high school--the one featured in this book--competed. Their mentor, physics teacher Amir Abo-Shaaer, a former engineer and dedicated pedagogue, worked very hard to realize his dream of hands-on education and affect his students' lives. Bascomb (and his collaborators who shadowed several other teams) does an excellent job recreating the atmosphere of the "build season" and competitions. The annual FIRST competitions are so much fun to watch I went down to Long Beach during two other years besides my son's (not the one described in this book, though), and it was exactly as described.As an aside, any FIRST team wanting to know what it takes to become a serious competitor would be advised to read this book. less

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