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Fall 2020 Times: Virtual Outings

  • Ray Law 

Fall 2020 Times

AMONG US

ATTENDANCE: 8 attended

REPORT

We started at 11 am on October 25 with people flowing in within the first 5 minutes. We all played normally for 45 minutes and then we switched to playing hide and seek. Overall everybody had a good time and I think the outing was a success. 

CUPCAKE VIRTUAL OUTING

ATTENDANCE: 7 attended

REPORT

During the Among Us outing on Sunday December 6th, we all had a fun time playing the game together and just chatting. It was a relaxing way to end the weekend, and a stress-free activity to prepare us for the busy week ahead.

BAY AREA HIKING EXPERIENCES PRESENTATION

ATTENDANCE: 7 attended

REPORT

During this virtual outing, led by me (Aidan Lee), I talked a bit about my hiking experiences on several different hikes in California and briefly discussed each individual hike. Those who attended include Mason Lee, Kai Harrington, Marian Wei Feng, Aidan Seto, Rafferty Meier, and Robert Cui. At the end of the virtual outing, we had a mini Q and A session where many of the scouts’ questions were answered. Overall, I had quite a lot of fun presenting my experiences and the scouts had a great time listening along.

BEE PRESENTATION

ATTENDANCE: 18 attended

REPORT

Overall the presentation went well. We watched a few videos about bees and then did a Kahoot. We did go a little bit over time because there were a lot of questions but it still went well. We let people leave and said that if people wanted to stay we would show one more video so the people who stayed learned how to check a hive for mites.

BOY SCOUT JEOPARDY

ATTENDANCE: 9 attended

REPORT

It ran for around 25-30 minutes from 4:30 to 5:00 on Sunday, October 18. We played one game of the Boy Scout Jeopardy, and practically everyone got to participate. The adults there were Calvin Seto and Hua Ai. 

CHILLI MAKING

ATTENDANCE: 7 attended

REPORT

Everyone successfully made the chili recipe and had lots of fun doing it too. Scouts had the opportunity to practice their knife and cooking skills while preparing a delightful dinner for their families. Additionally, while the chili was simmering, we all watched the Great British Baking Show!

CUPCAKE MAKING

ATTENDANCE: 5 attended

REPORT

We made cupcakes, played some holiday music, and did trivia.

FINGER PAINTING

ATTENDANCE: 3 attended

REPORT

On Saturday, November 28, 2020, I led a virtual outing where we had a lot of fun finger painting. Only two other people came, Marisol and Gabriela, but it was a really good group and a successful outing. There was no requirement to what we had to finger paint so we had people finger painting flowers, portraits and even still lifes of bananas (wearing sunglasses, of course).

HALF DOME PRESENTATION

ATTENDANCE: 12 ATTENDED

REPORT

The meeting started at 1:00 PM and ended at 1:45 PM.

The two adult volunteers for my presentation are Liya Su and Patrick Hunt.

I gave some background information on Yosemite National Park, went over the lottery system, talked about the preparation and the trail route of the trail to Half Dome.

At the end, I answered questions about my experience climbing Half Dome and other questions about the hike.

The sign-up sheet for the presentation can be found here, and the slides used in the presentation can be found here.

KAHOOT

ATTENDANCE: 6 attended

REPORT

For the outing we played multiple games of Kahoot and everyone participated.

PALY ROBOTICS TEAM 8 2020 COMPETITION ROBOT “NARI” PRESENTATION

ATTENDANCE: 12 attended

REPORT

The meeting started promptly at 1505 with all of the people listed above in the meeting. I went through what FIRST and FRC were, Team 8’s subteams and their respective roles, and then the robot. I mentioned in the beginning that if anyone had any questions to feel free to ask during the Zoom meeting. A few questions I received were “What happens when the robot dies right before the match?”, “How many applicants are accepted each year?”, and “What middle school opportunities are there in robotics?”. Overall, the meeting went great and the participants were engaged by asking questions.

SCOUT RELATED MAFIA

ATTENDANCE: 7 attended

REPORT

Attendance was a bit low for my liking, but we proceeded to play mafia anyways. The game was too easy with so little people, the scouts were smart and guessed the mafia on the first round. We then thought about ways to change up the game to be more exciting. Overall, the virtual mafia did not work out well and the troop should probably not try this in the future. The silence during the “night” of the Mafia game was just too long, and zoom made it worse. I could tell that the scouts were a little bored by the game, so I asked them about what they wanted to play. As the whole purpose of the virtual activating was bonding and keeping in touch with friends, I assumed that it would be fine to switch activities as long as the scouts remained happy. The scouts wanted to play scribble.io, so I let one of the scouts host a game and we played. The round was fun and engaging, and it was a great success. Near the very end, some of the scouts wanted to continue to play scribble, but the time was up and I had to go. All in all, I thought the meeting went well.

SKRIBBLE WITH BSA TERMS

ATTENDANCE: 10 attended

REPORT

We started with 9 people in the room. I made the skribbl room 3 rounds with some custom BSA words, but mainly the normal ones just to have fun. We played another 3 rounds of this since we had a lot more time than I expected. The last round was all boy scout words and everyone had a lot of fun playing.

TROOP WEBSITE DISCUSSION

ATTENDANCE

Aidan Lee, Aidan Seto, Gabriela Hakeman, Liam Hsiu, Aidan Hsiu, Kevin You

REPORT

Details about the discussion:

● Scouts were generally less interested in creating new features, whether that be a newer-

looking web design or blog/commenting sections. This can be seen through the survey,

as well as the comments at the discussion.

● Many already existing features on the website were not used by scouts, such as First

Year information or Troop news. It will be a different challenge to tell these features to

scouts.

● Then, we discussed each existing feature, and here are some comments:

● Troop news – Organize into current year and archive.

● Photo Albums – Scouts were less concerned with privacy issues on flickr. They

suggested a better style of organization, such as by event type, instead of only

chronologically.

● MB – Scouts would really like to find MBC info easy. However, there are regulations that

do not allow us to make it publicly available. We are technically supposed to talk to SMs

to obtain MBC info.

● General scouting Info – not known to many scouts.

● Site layout – Can be improved. Page names on the left seemed too dense. Can

implement sections and drop-down menus.

● Site design – We thought that it might be helpful to new families, but most scouts don’t

personally care about site design.

Improvements: We did deviate from the original plan, which made sense based on the number

of attendees and the opinion of attendees. The activity could be more effective if we, to count as

participation credit, to let people speak more. Some attendees were less active than others. I

did prepare a presentation that I didn’t use, which made us just stare at the survey results. I

could have prepared a back-up presentation instead.

STAR NIGHT

ATTENDANCE: 5 attended

REPORT

I gave a presentation on several different objects that were visible that night, including the moon, constellations like orion, as well as stars like sirius. I also told stories about their mythological origins.