The Meaning of FIRST
 

Hello,

I am a junior on team 2137 and have been involved in FIRST since I was on an FLL team in 2008. We recently had our first competition of the year at Waterford and did ok. On our second day of the competetion, me and my dad went in early because i had some work to do with my code. We moved into the cafeteria and I started debugging the code and adjusting things. After a while, some mentors came in and sat down at a table and began talking. They talked of things that needed to change, which I have no problem with, and how they could improve it. The part that i had a problem with was when a mentor started talking about what HE had changed, and what HE had did, which bugged me. It also bugged me that the team won an award for their programming.

This brings up a question.
Is this your team? Is winning more important than learning? Is it really helping inspire or teach students? So please mentors, let us do all the work, Its better that way. Maybe you too can win the award titled "I dont do anything" like our programming mentor did.

Sincerely, A Peeved Programmer

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Please be VERY, VERY, VERY careful about how you say this. I may agree that it may need to be said at times and places, but in general the saying of it tends to produce a very nasty flame war. Particularly when it is phrased in the general format of "I was at a competition and heard someone on another team say or observed another team doing". Particularly if it is relatively simple to figure out which team it was.


Signed,
A Person Who Has Seen the Above Happen.

P.S. I do suggest looking at FIRST's Vision and Mission statements, which are available on their site under "About Us". A short look may suggest that FIRST does not necessarily consider it better that the students do all the work, and will in addition answer some possible questions about the meaning of FIRST.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

What Eric said.

Inspiration and recognition does not equal "advanced shop class". What's better for your team is not better for all teams. Remember that.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Just a note, there are 2,534 teams registered and competing in FRC this year. That means that there are 2,533 teams being run in a manner entirely different than your own.

Being inspired is a lot like learning, not everybody does it the same way.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Last year in the pits I asked a good team how they programmed a certain aspect of their bot, and they didn't have a clue. I sincerely don't think they even knew what language they were programming in. How is this even possible?

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

You may have asked the mechanical subteam. Maybe the electrical subteam, though they could be reasonably expected to know at least the language. Programming, by nature, can be done almost anywhere (testing cannot, for some strange reason), so it's entirely possible the programmers were elsewhere and not available to answer the question.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Winning is important.
Learning is important.
Inspiring students is important.
Teaching Students is important.

Figuring out how to do all of these at the same time, in my opinion, is the meaning of FIRST.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Although you could be right, I'm pretty sure I asked the programmers. They were in front of their laptops fiddling around with usb/ethernet cables..don't think they were mechanical.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Flame suits - Engage!

Seriously though, this type of thread has been done ad nauseum here. Bottom line: HQ doesn't care how the inspiration happens.

If your team inspires by:
-Having students build the robot
-Having mentors build the robot
-Having students and mentors work together to build the robot. (Hint: this one is usually the most effective)

FIRST doesn't care how you do it. Just inspire people, build a brighter future. Be the change this world needs. FIRST isn't about building robots. Its about building people, and not just when they're high school students either.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

This whole argument is unhealthy, but I am going to be hypocritical and argue my point none the less.

You are so quick to judge an entire team based on the knowledge of a few members. I know absolutely nothing about programming, because I do CAD, Machining, Strategy, and Chairman's. There are not enough hours in the week for me to understand programming (and I just don't like it). Perhaps the team you were talking to only had mechanical students in the pits, or their programmers were having a meeting somewhere else in the building. I don't think it's fair nor productive to challenge said team's success or build process with such limited information.

Actually, even if you had more information I'm not sure you can judge the students for not programming. If there is a team of 10 students and none want to program or have interest in programming, should this team not use other resources in order to have the most successful robot possible?

I did not mean to offend, but sounded very offensive. I believe that the time effort and emotion put into a robot justifies its method of creation. As a senior who only had two years with FIRST, I understand the importance of inspiration, but also hope I can continue to take an active role in a team in the future despite my age or field of interest. Generally every team has a reason for its structure, and finds the solution it has for a reason, and not by pure accident.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I'm going to go back and address one of the OP's statements again. I know I commented on it before, but I think it's worth addressing again, in a slightly different context.

"So please mentors, let us do all the work" is the part I want to address this time.

First, having a case where a student does all the work may not always be practical. Just... trust me on this. I see it in a number of places and ways.

But second... Students, STEP UP! Show us you're ready to do as much of the work as we'll let you, and teach other students while you do it. Then, I would say that most if not all mentors will step back, and let the new mentors take over (and by new mentors, I do mean the students!). Push the mentors gently out of the way if needed.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

If there is a team of 10 students and none want to program or have interest in programming, should this team not use other resources in order to have the most successful robot possible?

No, they already have enough adequate resources. Coming from a team with 2 programmers, I believe even 4 programmers is a fair amount. Why would one like to join the programming subteam if they didn't even have any interest? If you need more resources because you are unable to provide ANYTHING yourself, it's just pure laziness and unwillingness then. You wouldn't learn anything if you had others do your work for you. This team had adequate amount of programmers, but seemed to fail to use them for the "success of a great bot".

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Mentoring has a couple different facets. We can do, we can show, or we can guide. Which is best is based on the mentor's style of mentoring, the students' style of learning, and the task at hand.

Now, my personal style is very heavy show/guide and very little do. I have not written a line of code for 79's robot this year. What I have done is handled much of the systems engineering and project management for our software team. Why do I mention this? Because there are some tasks that students simply aren't ready to undertake. I trust my students to manage their own tasks, to write effective code, and work together to accomplish tasks. I don't expect them to have a detailed understanding of how the mechanical and electrical systems on the robot work or the best sensor for a task. As such we work in a partnership, I do my part. They do theirs. Together we achieve our goals.

Sincerely, A (proud) Member of a Software Team

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I've read many threads on this topic but never commented, for various reasons, but I feel I can respond to this particular thread because I feel the title lends itself to my point.

The Meaning of FIRST: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

FIRST is not about teaching, it's not about learning, it's not about educating and it's not about instructing. It is a program whose main focus is on inspiring students. Inspiration is literally the name of the game.

Now, i'm not saying that learning doesn't happen. In fact I believe I personally have learned more during my participation in FIRST then in many of my classes, but that's a happy side effect and not the main goal.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

J and OP, you don't know the full story.

Mentoring is HARD. Even if you come from being on an FRC team in high school and then mentor, it is incredibly hard for any mentor to judge and gauge when and where they need to step in to get something done.

I personally no longer care who does what on a team because it is not my place to judge. I used to say the same things as you until I started mentoring. Don't be so quick to judge, once you (if you do) begin to mentor a team, you will also learn how difficult a task it is to know when to step in and when you need to let students or some aspect of the robot fail in order to teach the students.

With that said, I always dislike these threads because people don't fully think things through before making the thread. It is always easy to quickly get upset about a perceived situation, but take the time to think things out before judging a team.

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.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

And I thank you for that. :)

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

And we're now engaged in rebuilding the computer so that we can find the question. :D

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Wonder? Absolutely. But I don't think it's fair to make any accusations.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

FIRST should hang this over the door at every event. I learned WAY more as a student working with mentors who managed millions of dollars, wired Apollo capsules, ran real machine tools on the floor, drafted parts for durable goods, and designed hydro-electric turbines than I ever would have learned futzing with an Arduino on my own in my room.

I've had many people tell me over the years, "There's no way high school students did all that!" When I was a student I always tried to refute it. Now I reply with an enthusiastic, "YES! That's the point!!"

If you (the generic reader) go out and get an engineering degree, do you think you'll walk in your first day at Acme Corp. and be the chief engineer of everything in Wile E. Coyote's toolbox? Absolutely not! You'll be astounded by how much everyone else in the room knows, because there's a whole bunch you learn in 30 years of working that they can't quite cram into 4 years of schools.

If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room!

EDIT:
I also think it's worth noting I learned a ton from NEMOS, like the commercial fisherman, pilots (for boats), post office managers, stay-at-home moms, secretaries, etc. It really does take a village.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I think you're missing a major one here. Losing is important. In some cases, more so than winning.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I second this idea.

Losing, like criticism, is the only thing that makes you improve.

Winning just makes your ego smile.

That is why FIRST, borrowing from the sports model, is so effective.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Colleges do a very good job of producing scientists, programmers, engineers, and mathematicians. Let them do that.

In FIRST we inspire. We produce science, programming, engineering, and math students.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Wow, I did not think this would be a huge thread. I have thought about this whole idea for a while and I agree that mentoring is a huge part of first. Mentors are great because they give knowledge to students. If i have know idea whats going on, who do i ask? A mentor, I agree that there are also some things that i just couldnt do. Everyone has a right to run a team how they want as long as the kids come out inspired, and excited about their future, and have learned something. I also believe that students should have a large involvement in what is going on in their team, and how you do that is up to you/your team

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I disagree. They do a good job of producing people with science, programming, engineering, and mathematics degrees.

The practical experience that students learn by working with the mentors on a real life problem -- with real life constraints -- helps produce people who are good at those professions.


To another point discussed here: Losing is inspiring to some. Winning is inspiring to others. A good coach can make either inspiring to his/her team.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

In our team students do most of the things. Mentors do purchasing, scheduling and paper work and software setup on laptop/netbook. Students come up with design, have sub-teams review with mentor and other sub-team. Discuss alternate approach, decide on what we can do in 6 weeks, decide on nice to have features. Get to work, fabricate and assemble, we have basic tools, does not require much training. When mentor sees something may not work, he will gather the team discuss the potential problem and guide in possible solution. If he has no answer, we sleep on it for a later day. Our aim is not to win and go to championship, if we can design and build something is ready to compete, we will be proud. We win some matches and lose some...its life. When we get award, we thank judges for recognizing our efforts. We too come from FLL background our mentors then guided us to do everything, the followed FLL by book. No complaints. This is who we are.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

To quote JVN at a workshop, "There are years when I've designed the entire robot, and years when I've never touched the CAD mouse. It all depends on what the students are capable of, and how far they want to take their skills." (probably some exaggeration here, but you get the point). Our team has two people who can write code, one being me and the other being a mentor. Outside of competition, the programming work is a joint effort, but during competition, I work in the stands to help with scouting. This means that during competition, all programming changes are made by our mentor. This does not reflect who does what amount of work throughout the entire season, but works best for our team. Make sure to understand a team's situation before you make assumptions about them.

Another platitude: a mentor should be a coworker, not a help desk.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

What others have said is true: you don't really know the whole story.

I actually thought you were talking about my team and me specifically as a mentor until I saw that you weren't at the Arizona Regional.

During the competition, our lead programmer, who was also responsible for the chairman's award video, had to take a break to finish the video (no minute like the last minute! We do it Plasma Style!) In the meantime, the pit crew was having troubles getting the robot working on the practice field.

So, as the programming mentor, I filled in for our programmer and helped the pit crew, and also finished some outstanding code/sensor calibrations so that our robot could aim. When I needed a lunch break and the pit crew seemed about done, I came back to the cafeteria and told the programmer what I had done while he was busy.

Then we won the programming (Innovation in Control) award for the work that the students had done.

In summary: you have to spend an entire build season with a team before you can assume that their mentors are doing all of the work.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Calvin, I believe you have hit the nail on the head. It is this inconsistency between the FLL program and FRC program, that leads to this frustration. I am the OP's dad and programming mentor. We too had a improving run in FLL runs, and in 2008 placed 2nd in Michigan, and represented MI at the US open in Dayton. Not only is there a difference in who is to do the work, in FLL there is no Teleop either, so programming is much more important aspect of robot performance in FLL than FRC. There was just a post on CD about teams that don't use sensors, and are very successful at the FRC level.

The OP was blessed his freshmen year, with programming seniors that refused to touch the programming laptop, and made him do everything in labview. They were programming, he was learning labview. The second year, he was able to pick up and run with the ball without much mentoring, except for defining what we needed to work on during build, Beescript Autonomous, Holding on the bridge with encoders, ball shooter speed control with pid, drive straight with gyro feedback, encoder distance control..

So yes, "I don't do anything", but that is really only a statement based on today. Today I have a strong programmer on the team, that takes ownership of his work, is very happy to have the weight of competition on his shoulders, and is inspired.

Tomorrow, when I don't have that, I might have to do some work. But whoever the programmer or programmers is then, will understand the code, debug the code, and understand the limitations of the control system, before it goes on his, or her bot. If we only drive, that's ok, if we don't use sensors, thats ok, many teams are competitive doing that too. In fact TORC made it to nationals without encoders and gyro's the Breakaway year.

As pointed out many times in these posts, the yardstick is to inspire, so if a team inspires, I am good with it. You can't really measure inspiration of the team members, from an overheard mentor conversation.

I know, I would hate to be judged by some of the mentor conversations I have had in the past...:ahh:

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Man-o-man....I'm not getting involved here. Last time I was in this discussion, my "reputation" was blasted off the board. (hence the little red dots by my name) All I will say is as a mentor I would MUCH rather teach a student than "inspire" a student. I've seen extreme cases of both scenarios. I've seen teams with NO leadership, and I've seen teams where the students are not even in the pits. But hey...whatever floats your boat. I'm not going to get flamed again for this argument.

I believe that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

One of the only ways to get a lot of reds by your name here is to have the "wrong" opinion on this subject. Sort of frustrating how much of an echo chamber it becomes at times.

(Note: I'm not saying I didn't deserve the negative I got for my earlier post here. I did. No matter which side you're on, you should be respectful to people with the opposite argument and not stray into personal attacks.)

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I don't believe I'm replying to this thread. I know it goes against my better judgement, but here it goes.

This is an often used quote, but I don't believe it is the best analogy when it comes to FIRST. Here's why (this will probably be long winded: sorry):

We don't need inpiration to eat. If we don't eat, we will die. Everyone is already very inspired to eat, so if you need to fish to eat you already have plenty of inspiration (i.e. avoiding death).

A more likely statement would be: "if you solve and equation for a student, he has one solved equation. If you teach a student to solve equations, then the student can solve equations for a lifetime."

That sounds great, but the schools are already doing that. Unfortunately, the success rate is not good in a lot of cases.

The problem lies in the question that we've all heard from fellow students hundreds of times in our school days: "Why do we have to learn this? when are we ever going to use this crap!?!" The answer to this question is where FIRST comes in.

The issue is that if a student doesn't want to learn something, he/she generally won't learn it very well. People don't want to die of starvation so teaching a hungry person to fish is easy. People that think that imaginary numbers have no use in the real world don't have enough interest to not purge that knowledge right after the exam (if they have enough interest to learn it in the first place). Our standard education system does not have: a) a method of getting the students to want to learn, and b) a method to get them to apply what they've learned to reinforce it.

With all of that being said, these are my goals as a mentor:

Goal 1: Provide some answers to "how are we ever going to use this crap?"

Goal 2: Make students actually WANT to learn about math and science. (i.e. inspire them). If we can do some cool whiz-bang things, then they can see that not only can you use what you learned in school, but you can do some fun things with it.

Goal 3a: Get the students to learn above and beyond what they're learning in school, and apply what they've learned (i.e. get them to do some basic work on the robot).

Goal 3b: Get the students to use what they've learned to do some advanced work on the robot.


Goal 2 is the stated goal of FIRST. If I can't achieve that goal, that is when I feel I've failed as a mentor. Goal 3a and 3b are the icing on the cake.

I'm not always able to get all the way to 3b. Sometimes, I may not be able to get to 3a with all of the students in their first year on the team. It depends a lot on the students, but I try my hardest to get to 3b with every student that I can before he/she leaves the team.

Back to the original intent:

It's kind of like the reason that Dean Kamen founded FIRST: if he works on the world's problems, then he has one person trying to solve the worlds problems. If he creates an army of engineers, then he has an army solving the world's problems. I agree that if we can teach the students something then they have some skill that they can use for life. However, if we can inspire them to want to learn in school, then they will have thousands of skills that they would otherwise purge from their memory the minute the final exam is over.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

This.

Not all teams have any students to program. I tried to sweet-talk the mess out of programming, making it sound like the best thing since sliced bread, yet nobody wanted to step up. We only had roughly 10 students anyway. So I basically programmed the robot that year as a college mentor. Did I want to do it? No. But what should we have done? Have someone out of high school program the robot and make the FRC program worth their time, or just waste six weeks of our lives and thousands of dollars on a hunk of metal that just sits on the field because of some imaginary rule that states mentors can't work on the robot?

But let's assume that they do, in fact, have a programming team of, say, 2 or 3 students. How do you know that those students gave it their all, their 110%, and just couldn't figure out a specific problem? They Googled, CD'ed, did whatever they could on their own to solve the problem. So now they're resorting to the mentor. For all you know, yes, that mentor is going to program part of the robot, but maybe they're going to show the students how they're solving it as they figure it out.

I don't mean to sound rude, but you should get your facts straight when making this argument (which, by the way, has been done way too many times on CD) before making absurd assumptions and statements.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

The point you are trying to get across does not only go for programming. For many teams the mentors are the ones that did FRC themselves and still feel as they are a part of the highschool aged group aspect of the team. Meaning they feel many of the same responsibilities as the kids do, and since they are much more experianced and know what needs to be done they take much of the work on themselves, to make sure it gets done right.

Also not everyone on the team is willing to put the amont of time and effort in as others do, this means that a small group of students and the mentors usually end up picking up the slack.

It is a peeve when you hear that a mentor did so much but, many students put the majority of their time into the build too. Meaning the work is not always evenly shared between team members, so if the mentors left us to build our own robots more work would be on the other students.

It is very much worth it for the students who put their time into it, because they know what they have accomlished and to me the goal of FIRST has been accomplished by the students who try because the goal cannot be accomplished with no effort.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Oh no...I cannot believe I got another red dot. For being negative???? Gotta love those who post smart remarks and give negative ratings. I said nothing negative at all. Is there a way to find out who posted that last rating? Unbelievable!

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

If you click on "user cp" near the top of the page all of your reputations given and received are listed, along with who received/gave them and the associated comments.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Engineering is a big, big type of fishing to teach. Inspiring kids to study it in college might be more practical.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

I have been three years in FRC and at the beginning I had the same problem with mentors provinding "excesive" help. In my first season our mentors didn't even know what was FIRST about so they only guided us, they didn't help us to build, the only thing they did is that they made an iron (yes, iron) arm to handle the tubes (my first season was in 2011, Logomotion). They made the robot just as we told them. Making an iron arm was just stupid, too much weight.

Then when we arrived at the Alamo regional the first thing we noticed was the Robowranglers (148) robot. We could not understand how an student-made robot was so great. Then we saw a lot of mentors of the team working with the robot and since that was not happening in our team we thought they were cheating. (Of course they were not, the thing is that we didn't know that it is OK to be helped by your mentors).

In that season I felt very inspired towards engineering because it was really challenging to built a robot without much significant help. I wanted to be just like team 148 (I really admire those guys). And our robot that season did horribly, I felt frustrated but the goal was achieved. I was inspired to be an engineer, I started appreciating sciences also.

In my second season, long story short, we recieved too much help from our mentors. Our mentors arrived early to our workshop (while we were in class) to continue working with our robot, when we arrived at our workshop the robot had some serious issues resolved and some team members were a little disappointed about that. However, that was not the end of it, in the competition everyone was very inspired because of our robot did well and we had the chance to appreciate the job that other teams had done . (Again, team 148 and 118)

This is my third season and now I know that mentors working along students have nothing wrong. That way students can learn from their mentors and mentors can learn from their students also. The thing is, you need to know that FIRST is about inspiring students towards engineering and sciences and this can only be done by cooperating between mentors and students. The balance between student and mentor work needs to be found by each team. Each teams needs to know what works for them.

You need to accept that a robot built 100% by students is not going to win against a robot built between students and mentors. Also the experience that an student get from working with its mentor is one of the best things of FIRST, mentors are there for a reason.

Work along with your mentors, you will not regret it. That is the meaning of FIRST and each team should work to find their way to accomplish it. It is all about inspiring people.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

As many other threads on this subject have described, very Very VERY few teams exist on either extreme (all student vs all mentor) and if they do then they won't last long. I think all of us here on CD (and the FIRST community) can agree that the issue is one of "many shades of gray" instead of a black and white one. So why on earth do people attack the other side using arguments that assume a black and white answer?

Use your brains and actually think about what someone means by their statement. "Mentor built" may not mean that mentors are actually building/programming the entire robot. It could be meant that they are designing the whole thing, dictating what is done, heavily influencing its design through suggestion, building the tricky components, doing the majority of the machining, etc. The same for the flip side with "Student built." I know for a fact that my personal definition of "mentor built" does not match many people's definition and it has caused a lot of friction in the past. Think about the possible differences in perspective before you post! It will turn this into less of a trench war and more of a conversation!

This issue is as much an issue of a failure of communication as it is an actual issue. This debate had quite a few flame wars before I was even aware of FIRST, so I choose to suspect that some ancient history is the culprit for this chasm of assumptions between the two sides. None the less why is the argument stuck in the same spot it was when I was a high school freshmen? We should not be arguing the same things, but rather setting community-wide definitions so that future arguments are actually worth something.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Good luck.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Just so it's clear - it wasn't me. I kind of liked your comment.

Sorry for my overly long response. I think connor worley made a great one sentence summary of what I tried to say in 3 pages. I need to be more concise. Thanks, Connor.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

Exactly this. It seems to me that the vast majority of the comments in many of these topics are attacking either entirely student-built robots or entirely mentor-built robots, when of course the vast majority of teams fall somewhere in between (and not particularly close to either extreme). It's not surprising that very little ever gets accomplished in these topics when most people are attacking concepts that few teams embody and few people are willing to defend or think is right.
There are legitimate issues about some teams possibly getting too far towards one side or the other, and the effects that may have on the greater FIRST community. It's unfortunate that they get buried under a bunch of strawmen most of the time.

Re: The Meaning of FIRST
 

There are clearly two sides to this argument. As for me personally, I've been in FIRST for two years, and been on two incredibly different teams at very oposite ends of the spectrum. My first FIRST team (why does that never get old?) was a very small team. We didn't have the time or the student base needed to have the kids do everything alone, and we REALLY didn't have the mentor base to be able to teach every student to do everything alone. Our goal was just to get it all done in whatever way we could- even if that meant mentors stepping in a lot more than some teams think they should. It worked though, and because of those limited resources I learned that if you want of know something you need to step up and bother someone until they show you, and once you know you better be able to do it AND teach it to someone else too.
This year I was on a very large first year team. We were blessed with a lot of brilliant and dedicated mentors, a combination I was anticipating to mean that the students did practically nothing. Then we decided to go with a very "hands off" approach that meant that the kids learned a truley incredible amount of skills in a short time, but we could also afford to take the time and take students away from working long enough to explain how every little thing worked before letting the kids do it. Both these approaches have been praised and criticized, along with all the other 2000+ ways teams are run, but in my experience every FRC team values student learning- and values it in a different way than every other FRC team. As long as the students learned SOMETHING, (whether it was programing skills, shop skills, life skills, team work, or just that if you stay at school long enough during build season pizza will arrive) then the goal has ultimately been accomplished.