Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I think the argument you are making is just based on too small of a sample size. This point has been made, but there are over 2500 teams in FIRST, they all aren't going to run how you want. That's just not how FIRST works. There are many different ways to "skin the cat" that is, building a robot and more importantly, inspiring students. And believe me when I say that many teams do not have the adequate resources to have depth at every level of the engineering process.

On my team until recently, we were lucky to have 10 kids on the team. And really only about five of those were dedicated and came almost every day. Many of us didn't have a engineering background so we needed our mentors to step up and teach us what we didn't know. Yes that meant sometimes they had to machine a part or do some of the coding but that didn't mean we were incapable or that they weren't letting us do anything, they just had the experience. We did our fair share of the work and the mentors did theirs. The combination of the two is what gets the robot done in six weeks. I can honestly say that without my mentors, I wouldn't be where I am today or have the knowledge of engineering that I have. They have taught me so many lessons, not just about robots, but about life. They have truly inspired me.

I can tell you the high majority of mentors are there for the greater good to inspire and teach you. I think you're letting one mentor skew your entire image of what a mentor truly is.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

This is a great point, and I would like to expand on it a little bit with some of my own experiences.

When I graduated, a few of the students I had mentored in FLL were joining our FRC team and were interested in programming. We had an awesome senior who was a better programmer than I was take care of the main robot code, so I mainly worked with the new guys. When I first worked with them we took the line sensors from the 2011 kit, and we decided to make a line follower. I wrote 100% of the code that went into it, but I made them tell me what to code. I wanted to teach them that the hard part of programming is figuring out exactly what they want the robot to do. The syntax is the easy part, it just takes a little time to get used to. The rest of the season went on mostly like that.

The next year the programming was all up to those students. They had become more comfortable with actually programming the robot on their own, so we all worked together pretty evenly. As that season went on they became better and better at programming on their own.

This season one of the programming mentors who was around back when I was a student was able to get more heavily involved with the team again. The programmers would write their code, then once they were done that mentor would help them make it more professional. I think this was a big help for them. I was able to teach them how to just make a program work, he is able to teach them how to code everything in the best way. At our last competition when our pit programmer would want to make a change, he would explain to me what he was doing, he would code it, I would take a quick look through it mainly as a second set of eyes, then he would put it in the robot and test it.

I really believe that the amount of work a mentor should do is dependent on how much knowledge or experience the students have in the subject. That is the approach my mentors had when I was a student, and I really enjoyed it. I probably wouldn't have stuck with programming if I had't had great mentors to help me get started. This has been a recipe for success, and I plan to stick with it until the students stop enjoying it or stop learning.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I think this is the source of the confusion for the OP
One part of FIRST does emphasize and require that the students do the work- The FLL. The transition to FRC can be borderline traumatic as is evident in the opening post. Chief Delphi postings deal mainly with FRC topics and are made by many who have only passing acquaintance with FLL and its core values. Those posting who do have FLL experience are generally mindful of the philosophical and practical differences between the programs. In the absence of specific statements from FIRST about the difference, we are all left with the problem of dealing with varying levels of expectation about students' participation from all of us. Some are better at it than others, like any other human activity.

I hope my explanation helps those who read it to consider that there may be explanations about how FRC teams operate that are not immediately apparent.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

This is an interesting topic and one we converse about fiercely and frequently in our program. It seems to me that being able to post the concern and have a healthy exchange about what it means is all about FIRST. It is the interchange of ideas, and opinions that make it work. Gracious Professionalism is a FIRST ideal. We can disagree without being disagreeable. It's not about me, well except for me... :)

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I'd like to expound on this, as I can relate. Heavily. I participated in FLL for 6 years before joining my FRC team. Not only that, but my FLL team was very successful. We got better and better over the years too. By our last season we decided to go to the World Festival. So we did, we won the State Championship and got to go to Worlds. All this to say that our coaches and mentors did nothing. After this I jumped into FRC. I tried to keep an open mind and not compare it to FLL, but even that as hard. There were times I would get frustrated with how much the mentors did. By now I've gotten used to it (mostly).

I think the key is to understand the difference between the programs. FLL is "designed to get kids excited about engineering and technology*". The tools FLL uses are also built for kids to use. I think at their age, if they weren't doing the work they probably wouldn't get much out of it. I know I wouldn't have. FRC is vastly different, it has much more advanced machines, older students, and a far different mentor-student interaction. FRC's goal is to inspire, regardless of how the inspiration comes about. They strive to inspire "by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs.**" If an FRC mentor has to make a part to inspire a student, that's fine. If the student can then make a part himself, that's great!

To summarize, I think FLL is to get kids excited. "This is fun!!" FRC is to get them inspired. "Look at what we/I can do."

Well I hope this post makes some sense, it's all just my thoughts and opinions. Hope it helps.
-Calvin

*From the FLL website.

**From the FRC website.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Forgive me if I step out of bounds here, but I think it's extremely rude to judge a team so hastily based on a few members and one conversation. You do not know the team or how they operate.

Mentors are incredibly important to FIRST because they can teach and inspire the students. If they "let the students do everything", chances are the students aren't going to learn and understand what they could have done better. I'm not saying any form of mentoring style is better than another, because everything changes on a case to case basis. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't judge a team for a mentor's work. You have no way of knowing how much effort, or how little, student members put in.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

FIRST for me is getting to opportunity to learn from the smartest people I know, the mentors. They made it a point this year to be hands off on design, build, and programming. Our teacher sponsor and a team member's mom assembled our bumpers this year. The students got all the material and cut the wood, they assembled it. Anyways, a mentor I worked very close with is an engineer at Boeing. He showed me the ropes of programming last year, and told me to have at it. This year was a little more structured, he knew where the program needed to go, told me, and I had to figure out how to get it there. I feel this was a great system for learning, because if I ever had an questions concerning my programming logic, we would take to the whiteboard, where anyone was welcome to try and point out flaws with us. He's done more for me that taught me how to program a Kinect. He's INSPIRED me to learn programming on my own. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be asking why and how, I'd be playing LoL. Now, I do both XD

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I agree with you that one shouldn't shouldn't judge a team based on a few members convos etc, but, if you were in my position and asked a similar question to the same team, and had the same response. -Wouldn't you just wonder like I did?

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Every time one of these topics comes up, I deeply regret that I am not capable of drawing my many, many thoughts and emotions on this topic into a coherent post. The one thing I'd like to say is this: A FIRST team can and should provide way, way more than just "inspiration". Defending accusations like this with "well, I think they're still inspiring their students, so it's OK" is a massive cop-out.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I don't think its a cop out at all. All those other things that FIRST teams can and should and do use to provide the inspiration are great and important. But the specifics are irrelevant so long as the ARE inspiring.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Since the title of this thread is "The Meaning of FIRST", I don't think that's even a minor cop-out. FIRST is about inspiration. Check out its mission:

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

You can find that on the FIRST web site.

I've observed a few teams with extremely strong mentor involvement in all parts of the team. One such team struck me a week ago as having an unusually high fraction of the people working on the robot being well past high school. I can imagine that some people view that as undesireable. But do you want to know that team is viewed by FIRST? The Chairman's Award banners they have received say that FIRST likes what they do, and that they represent a model for other teams to emulate.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I'd like to address the elephant in the room:
Those elite teams that consistently build and program awesome robots that make some people think, "Oh why bother competing with a robot that was obviously made by professional engineers."

I have been doing this since 1998 and walking through the pits is still my favorite activity. I like to note who is surrounding the robot and touching, disassembling, reconstructing, machining, and programming. You can tell by the level of student participation how well the mentors have trained and passed off the reigns through their educating and inspiring of their proteges.
You reap what you sow.

It really isn't about the robot, but there is a wide spectrum of mentor control exhibited in the pits.

118: Watching the students in Hartford last year tear down and rebuild their robot. It was almost completely student driven with mentors only advising.

254: Sitting next to the Einstein Field in 2011 with their student programmer rapt in his attention as to how well his autonomous was working and if he should tweak it further.

1717: Riding to the airport after St. Louis last year and learning that their team is all seniors who have been trained and progressed through three previous years of training for the eligibility to create a robot for each season.

177: I check them out every year as I am fascinated by their consistent success. Driver training is essential to them. Their mentors are very good about the students owning the design and operation.

Each team, like every family, is unique in its own way.

Some mentors volunteer their precious free time and just want to help put out a respectable product and may have to exert more control than they like to complete the project.
Other mentors are part of a comprehensive program that successfully trains and develops the talents of students over four years.
Each of them sincerely believe in the meaning of FIRST.

So take some time, check out each robot in their pit. Respect and forgive the mentors who are doing the best they can with what they have, and admire those who have developed competent teams wherein the students were able to develop talents and skills under their auspices

In the end, at the competitions, all of the students see a panoply of teams, a variety of approaches, and are witness to the different solutions created to solve a common problem.

This will inspire them in the future as it demonstrates the possible.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

My ideals of what FIRST should be almost certainly do not match those of the FIRST leadership. I would suspect, in fact, that that applies to many here. No matter what they say, I will continue to believe that if a community is spending many thousands of dollars per year, the time and energy of many students, teachers, and mentors, the limited resources of a school, and much more into a robotics team, and all it is or is hoping to get out of it is to "inspire" some students, then something is very wrong.

I agree that, in most cases, targeting specific teams with circumstantial evidence (which luckily doesn't happen too much around here) helps no one. As a Bay Area resident I've heard plenty of stories about how 254's mentors never let students touch the robot except for drive practice, and I've also heard from a former 254 member that their mentors were useless and never did anything. Almost certainly, neither is the exact truth, just like all of the half-heard stories or rumors that occasionally pop up here and elsewhere.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Almost certainly do not match? That is some serious hyperbole, my friend.

So, could you be more specific about what your ideals of FIRST are, and why the almost certainly do not match those of the "FIRST leadership"?

There is the vague notion of what "inspiration" really means in the context of FIRST.
Definition: The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.
Why do you demean this ideal?

How about Recognition? Helping our world to recognize the value of the engineering and the other skills like marketing, fundraising, and project management that are essential to the creation of an improved society.

You're entitled to your negative opinion, but could you be more specific about what is really eating at you? What do you see as being "very wrong"?

How much money does your local school and community devote to athletic sports activities? Much less than they devote to robotics is my guess. What is the point of this expenditure, other than to provide bread and circuses for the masses. At least in FIRST, all of the students stand a better chance of going professional.
(BTW, I have an awesome bracket for the NCAA) :)

I agree with you that targeting this thread with no substantive evidence or even an alternative idea "helps no one".

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

But really hasn't the meaning already been found, and that is

wait for it;






42


Sorry but I just had to.