Self Sustainable Team : Summer Camps.

[xitaqua]

Is there any teams that gets 100% of their funding from summer camp ?
How about 50% grant, 50% summer camp ?

What other mixes of funding sources we have out there.

Enclosed is an example of a robotics summer camp in Missouri.

Cheers,
Marcos.

::rtm::

[rocknthehawk]

Team 549 holds engineering and lego summer camps, raising around $10,000 a year. Hopefully someone from their team can chime in with more info.

[MattC9]

We hold vex and Lego summer camps. The middle school kids build vex robots in a week and they play the new vex game (this year sack attack).the Lego kids do the same but they do it with FLL and with last years game plus the first 2 or three days we teach them how to build and program a robot.

That's just a brief over veiw. PM if you have any questions.

[Mongai]

Our team is running its second Lego camp this summer. We are only doing one session per summer at the moment. Profit wise, we expect around 3k. We are a team that traditionally relies on grants but looking at past financial troubles, starting up these camps is definitely a good start in raising thousands.

[xitaqua]

Thank you all for sharing.

I am assuming many of you are buying the LEGO Education kit version, instead of the one selling at toy store.

Does anyone know if the Education kit version, has instructions on how to build the croc-bot ?

Cheers,
Marcos.

[rsisk]

No, it doesn't have those instructions.

We purchased the Lego Education kit plus the extension kit for each team at our summer camps.

[xitaqua]

Does the extension kits have instructions to build the croc-bot ?

If not, what kind of robots does the extension kit have instructions for ?

Cheers,
Marcos.

[ttldomination]

Team 549 holds engineering and lego summer camps, raising around $10,000 a year. Hopefully someone from their team can chime in with more info.

Hmm, that value sounds a little on the high side, but I can only guess taht a well established camp that's over its start up costs can easily pull roughly 10K. Interesting.

- Sunny G.

[Adam.garcia]

It is funny that you mention this..

This year is the first year that our team is holding a week-long Summer Robotics camp targeted at Kids who are between 3rd grade and 8th grade.

Using the LEGO mindstorm kits, we will introduce the kids to various robotic principles, while keeping the mood light and enjoyable.

If you'd like more information regarding our itinerary, we'd be glad to help out.

We expect to raise between $1,600 to $3500 (assuming $80 for the week).
Our main goal however is to spread the word about FIRST Robotics and how amazing it truly is!

[ttldomination]

We expect to raise between $1,600 to $3500 (assuming $80 for the week).
Our main goal however is to spread the word about FIRST Robotics and how amazing it truly is!

This is actually interesting.

How are you structuring your camp? What's your group size? How are your "counselors" compensated? What's the challenge these kids are going to be facing? How many kits are you stocking up on?

Do you have to pay anything for facilities? Was there any special kind of license or ceritification your team needed to get? What are your hours?

- Sunny G.

[xitaqua]

Sunny,

Is your team thinking in doing a summer camp ?

Cheers,
Marcos.

[ttldomination]

Sunny,

Is your team thinking in doing a summer camp ?

Cheers,
Marcos.

No, this topic has just piqued my curiosity.

- Sunny G.

[daniel_dsouza]

We expect to raise between $1,600 to $3500 (assuming $80 for the week).
Our main goal however is to spread the word about FIRST Robotics and how amazing it truly is!

I truly agree with your main goal.
But where I live, we practically have to beg kids to join our FLL team for free. Many schools are trying to start up "spatial reasoning" classes, which takes away from our pool.
During the summer, veteran programs from community colleges and ASU destroy chances of having a summer camp.
While you may think I am pessimistic, this really happened to us last FLL season. If you have no competition, go for it!

[wendymom]

This year Bacon is holding 2 week long summer camps. One for 5 -8th graders and one for 2-5th graders. (that one is sold out). We were approached to do this camp by a school after we had worked with their cub scouts helping them earn their science belt loop.

We will be paid 100.00 per kid. Our camp will run from 9 to 1pm everyday. We are expanding on our Exploding Science program. In the mornings we will do team building activities, then fun experiments in Chemistry, Physics, wind and solar power and simple machines. Then snack time and outdoor time, then we work with the Lego Mindstorms kits. On Friday we will have a mini tournament.

We can take up to 30 students per week.

This is the first time we have ever done something this complex. We ran a robot camp for 4-H several years ago but didn't do anything other than Lego robots.

Should be interesting to see how we pull it off.

[Adam.garcia]

This is actually interesting.

How are you structuring your camp?



Attached is the preliminary itinerary for our week-long robotics camp:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49727352/Lego%20Robotics%20Schedule.xls

We will primarily be using the LEGO Mindstorm Kits.



What's your group size? How are your "counselors" compensated?


We will have approximately 20 kids ranging from rising sophomores to seniors (as well as a few of us leaving off to college) running the majority of the program.

Our head robotics coaches/teachers will be supervising this whole week-long camp. However, they are not going to be running the camp: That is for us students to.



What's the challenge these kids are going to be facing?



Download the link that I sent you. It should have a full itinerary. If you have any further questions about each of these games, I will be happy to clarify.



How many kits are you stocking up on?



I believe we have approximately 8-10 full kits. We assume 5 kids per kit is quite manageable. Therefore, we will be able to accept at most 50 kids.


Do you have to pay anything for facilities? Was there any special kind of license or ceritification your team needed to get? What are your hours?



Everybody running this camp (from teachers to students) will be doing this free of charge. The aim of this camp (from the financial side) is to raise money for our team while providing an interesting service to the community. Students who cannot afford to pay for this camp will be subsidized.

Most importantly, this is a great opportunity to get involved, and that is what our team strives to accomplish.

[xitaqua]

Hello Adam,

Great info. This year I am helping the faith community getting involved with robotics, I am working with a group of homeschool parents from a rural community and also a leader of temple in a urban setting to hold a robotics summer camp.

The homeschool parents are still trying to figure out a place to meet, it will probably be a church, a library or the home of one of the parents.

I agree that 5 students per kit is manageable. As we are getting started, until we have more kits, I am recommending to the learning community no more than 10 students, if we have more than 5 students we split into two groups, one focus on SW and the other on HW.

[dag0620]

While it's not quite a Summer Camp, 1071 does run an FLL based program through our town's larger Summer Studies program. I'm not quite sure if it pertains to this thread, but if someone has questions on how we run this program, let me know I'll be glad to post it in this thread or send you a PM.

[rsisk]

Adam,

Your camps are very similar to ours. We are just finishing the planning and will post as soon as they are done.

We limit to 5 kids per kit. 1 counselor per team and at least two adult counselors are at the camp. We run from 9AM-2PM with snacks for lunch. Everyday we have some sciencey fun thing planned (water day, drive the big robot day, egg drop day, poster day (day 1)). The groups form teams, come up with team names, make a poster of their team. They keep engineering notebooks (important for Boy Scouts at our camp). Everyday, the team has to present their robot for the day. On the last day, we invite all the parents to join us for a final competition. The teams show their posters, describe what they have done, then have a competition.

We try to get our team to donate most of the supplies. We have three mindstorms we use and charge $75 for the 4 day camp.

This year we are adding a third week of camp in a poor neighborhood. Our plan is to find sponsors for each kid at the camp.

[Tyler Olds]

Wave Robotics in partnership with the YMCA hosts three, one week camps called Tech Adventure for students 9-14. The first two camps are for 4 days that revolve around the Mindstorms kit and the basic programming aspects of it. On the 5th day of those camps we have a additional day available where students get to learn about physical and/or chemical science. The last week is where students will get 4 days to design and program a robot for the Food Factor Challenge and will compete on the 5th day.

We have actively sought out grants were able to hire a couple of teachers to design and lead a structured curriculum for the camp. The Physical and Chemical science days are designed and lead by students of Wave Robotics.

The YMCA provides the facilities and covers the other expenses and we split 50% of the gross profit with them (very advantageous for us).

More information can be found on our website at www.waverobotics.com

[Adam.garcia]

Adam,

The groups form teams, come up with team names, make a poster of their team. They keep engineering notebooks (important for Boy Scouts at our camp). Everyday, the team has to present their robot for the day. On the last day, we invite all the parents to join us for a final competition. The teams show their posters, describe what they have done, then have a competition.


These ideas sound very promising:
1. Keeping engineering notebooks
2. Parents come to join for the final competition.

Do you have an itinerary/supporting documents so our team may reference your ideas an possibly modify our program accordingly?

[xitaqua]

Adam,

I hope to compile all the different concepts/ideas in a powerpoint presentation and I will upload to ChiefDelphi at the end of the summer.

Cheers,
Marcos.

[rsisk]

These ideas sound very promising:
1. Keeping engineering notebooks
2. Parents come to join for the final competition.

Do you have an itinerary/supporting documents so our team may reference your ideas an possibly modify our program accordingly?

I'll post into CD Media shortly, busy with an FLL tournament in Carlsbad this weekend.

[xitaqua]

Hello All,

I hope everyone's summer program is doing good.

Here in St. Louis, we have 116 students on a summer camp focused on health/gardening/robotics. The students come from 6 elementary and one middle school.

We started the summer with 6 LEGO Mind Storms, now we have added to our assets two quad-copter Parrot drones and budget to build one out of Arduino in the fall using a design developed by St. Louis University. Things are looking really great.

The plan is to have the students sell the produce from their gardens along with cookies and BBQ to take all of them to......drum roll......SIX FLAGS.

We hope by 2013 Summer we will have a quad-copter per school, and start training elementary students on how to pilot the Parrot drone : Hamilton Elementary UAV Pilot Training Academy. The plan is to fundraise the money to purchase 4 additional Parrot Drone in the fall, train all the instructors in the Spring 2013, and start the academy in the summer.

Anyone have experience in holding a summer camp with underwater robots to help on aquaculture such as Tilapia and Fresh Water Shrimp ?.

Cheers,
Marcos - BERSDT Program Manager
www.bersdtmo.org

[1986titans]

Team Titanium now does 3+ full weeks worth of summer camps. The make-up of the camps change every year.

This year's camps: http://teamtitanium1986.wordpress.com/about/camps/ (a rookie and veteran NXT camp each aren't listed on the page, so there are actually 7 camps)
Previous year's camps: http://teamtitanium.org/camps.html

[xitaqua]

Hello 1986titans,

I would like to send some of the teams I mentor to the summer camp, when do you guys update the schedule to reflect 2013 ?

Looks awesome.

Cheers,
Mark.