Way to get kids to join a team
 

I have read that many teams have trouble getting kids to join their teams so I have thought of a way.

Carry random parts of a robot arround with you in school, ie a small gear box, wheel, etc..Soon, you wil have students all around you aking questions as to what you have and then you have them hooked. ;) ;)
Be careful, this might draw a lot of attention :D :D

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Indeed, this proved to be quite the eye opener at school!! Gained a lot of interest, but it was after school, so the only people who saw were already committed to one sports team or another.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

At my school we have a thing called "Clubfest" where people wander through the commons signing up for the various clubs and teams. Setting an area aside for driving a robot right in the middle of all this tends to draw a lot of attention. As if that wasn't enough of a head turner, we all wear our bright Hawaiian shirts! :p One of the most important things is for team members to talk to the people about how fun and exciting FIRST is.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Well the way we get so many to help on our team is. We are from MA and we do the Florida Regional. We went for 11 days this year. Big selling point... DISNEY for 5 days and the regional for 3. We stay at the allstar resorts and then just bus over to the compition in the morining. I could see this working for any team that does not live near florida. And it only cost 500 dollars. Then our mentor uses curfew to get them loud in the stand. If they are not loud its 8pm curfew. If there average its 11:30 and if there very loud its 2am. The team after Friday got to stay out till 2:30 becuase we got an award. Then when we won saturday we got to stay out till i belive 3am.

Ill be honest. I first went to florida to go to florida did not give a a crap about the robot. Then when i saw the comp i was hooked. This is how we get most of the people who do a majority on the robot. Now i am hooked and sad that i am out of high school. But team 61 wont be around next year so it kinda works out. Stinks for the sophmores and juniors that are hooked :(

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Another aspect of this "promotion" dealie is helping teachers recognize FIRST. Our chief mentor made a point of inviting our highschool principal to the competition where she hadn't been terribly supportive of students skipping school for it before. After the competition, she was a lot friendlier about the issue. I think the most important thing about attracting new people is to show them every aspect of the club, not just what you might be doing at the moment. Invite them to a meeting, or an event or something and really mean it. I have gotten a lot of people committing to join next year just by encouraging to meet team members and be involved.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Go to the schools who's students will be comming up to the high school next year. This week, we went to one of the junior highs in our area, gave a presentation for their science club, then roamed the hallways finding random people and telling them "join robotics"....when any of them didn't give us the "eww...freak :p " look...we would actually go into more detail, and we got some people interested that probably wouldn't have heard about it.

Hope you enjoyed my run on scentence.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

I enjoyed your runon sentence amazingly ^^. That's a very cool idea. I go to a 7-12 school so most of the junior high students are inducted into SECOND and or Lego League. Since our team is affiliated with a few highschools, it may not be a bad idea to go to the corresponding jr highs and talk. Thank you.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

last year before the day of robot rodeo (florida offseason competition)... we were working on out autonomous mode out in the parking lot during class... once the bell rang, myself, jim, michele, and mike were still stuck in the parking lot with the robot since we were not done... it looked like most of the kids who were passing by forget where there class was... they were standing right infront of the robot (making a big crowd) and was asking us all these different kind of questions... *robots does get quiet attention*

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

We drove around 4 robots after an in-school choir concert. That was cool, we shot soccer balls with Buzz 7, and flipped Buzz 6 with Buzz 8....and of course we made Buzz 9 hang from my DJ truss. We also had Jim Zondag come out and talk to the kids, to show that the engineers aren't as intimidating as they may seem.

After that, we made a display in the cafeteria with all 4 robots (Buzz 9 hanging once again) And we set up our pit display boards. It was the best in-school recruiting effort that our team has ever done.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Yeah, I'm starting a team at my school. Was part of team 114 as a freshman but want to get people interested at my school. I drove this years bot during lunch one day but I don't think the word got out enough. Got about 4 guys into it. I was thinking about putting a competition video on the morning TV announcements to spark some interest. Great ideas to attract new people. Wish me luck. :D

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

After finishing up all of my exams and such, I was given permission to do a robot demo, with a spiel about FIRST Robotics to the faculty during one of their morning meetings. Many of the faculty members announced that it was the most enjoyable faculty meetings of the entire year.

After that I was allowed to terrorize students in the commons area the entire school day. I also encouraged some teachers within the science department to come out during part of their period to demo the robot for the students and answer questions. A surprising amount of students showed interest.

It may be a little late, but demo this year's robot towards the end of the school year, get students on an email list for the robotics team. Send out information about the team, and certain events (fundraisers) the team may be doing. And do a few more right after school has started (the following year) so students who saw the demo last school year, would remember how cool the robot is, and may make an effort to actually join. Mainly because the last few days before school gets out, students are more interested in a "no work, party all summer" routine.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

I wish you the best of luck. One suggestion I have is to reach out to local FIRST teams to help mentor and attract students. An example of this: our team recently did a presentation for a nearby school that has interest in starting a team. I think it had a very very positive effect and hopefully we'll have a strong relationship with them next year. Use the resources other teams have to mentor your rookie team: if you reach out and ask, I'm sure there are at least a few teams in the area who would be willing to host a demo or team party for wouldbes of your new team. Once again, good luck.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Before anything else, do you have a teacher willling to be with you all year? I would say develop a strong relationship with an able teacher who would support the team all year. The kids will follow, I dont think people have a very hard time getting kids in. The word "ROBOTICS" is attrative enough. Just wearing a shirt saying something like "JAGUAR ROBOTICS" or whatever works;

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

We get students from the teacher mentors we have on the team. Mr. B has an 3 engineering classes, that pull the majority of out team. In Mr. B's first class is called ATEX, where 10th graders try several courses at our tech center. The next step is a two year program, this is where the 10th graders choose there favorite class from there ATEX courses and have a further look into that class for two years. Many of them just happen to choose Mr. B's class Engineering Technology,but there is limited room. Many who do choose Mr. B's class or likes Mr. B's class but didn't get excepted usually join our robotics team. Those who do make usually join as well. Our second source and Intro to Engineering class taught by Mr. Evans. This is where we get our freshmen. and many of the freshmen take ATEX in there 10th grade year. And finally we get students from the R/C Car club, which is lead by Mr. Evans.
All of these things allow us to get new people and keep people interested, this also allows us to get students from 3 high schools with the tech center.
It has been succesful for three years and we hope to continue for many more years to come.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

I have two teachers who are going to be the teams main faculty support. One is an ME by practice but the other really doesn't know to much about robotics, she just enjoys watching kids learn. I wear my 114 t-shirt a lot. :)

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Sorry guys, I don't know how to stick to qoutes in one post. :p

114 has said they will be more than willing to let anyone from my team come over and participate in the workshops that they run. They let me take the robot to my school which was really cool. :D

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Very very cool. Have you started any kind of name list yet? That would probably help

Also remember that you'll get new students at the school next year and they'll be looking for activities to get involved in, and Robotics is a very "make friends fast" activity. So keep them in mind too ^^

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Oh, let 'em drive the robot. That's by far the best way to get kids interested. Set up a table during lunch or clubfest or whatever you find most suitible with a display including pictures, video, handouts, a person to answer questions, and a signup sheet. Not too far away, set up a station to allow the kids to drive the robot (monitored by an experienced member with a kill switch). Pick your most crowd-pleasing robot, and have a playing object or two to mess around with. Soon enough, you'll have a crowd of people around you, tons of kids screaming in your ear to drive the robot, several new members, and a headache.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

My school is actualy 6-12 grades wich makes it perfect for starting an FLL team once we get a bit of experience. The reason not to many people got involved after I brought in the robot that it wasn't very organized. Really, I just brought in the robot and that was it. No announcements or anything. :( The first meeting was after school so that didn't help either. Because of this bad planning I will definintly have another robot demo at the beginning of the next school year. At least I have 4 core guys with which I can start a team. Keep the help coming. :D

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

We just drive it around the halls at school. Right after the last bell. It creates a lot of attention. Especially when we crash into things! :ahh: And when we start fighting over the joysticks. And when we topple garbage cans... And when we push this year's goal around with the drivers in it.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

I go to a 7-12 school, and our pilot program for last year's Chairman's award at Midwest Regional was SECOND (Science and Engineering Can Open New Doors) and we basically ended up introducing juniorhigh kids to that. They really enjoyed it a lot it seems, because they have shown a lot of interest in coming back. It is much more robotics oriented than regular FLL, so that maybe something to consider. Give younger kids a build season, and see wht they can do. You'd be suprised.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

Do a junior high robot demonstration. (if applicable), get out your 2001 robot, put on some hip-hop music (if that is popular in the school, otherwise rock or [eek] boy bands), and start balancing and picking up balls. Also get the big ball (alright, you can use this year's for it also), pick it up, extend the arm, and drop it on the really extremely irrating vexing annoying person in junior high. Grade 6 is too young to submit to that "torture". The next year, we had approximately 20 new high school members. :D

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

We've done roadshows for entire schools at the end of the FIRST season. In addition to showing the robot off, we do a set of science tricks, which usually gets the younger ones enchanted. Then we select both a group of teachers and a group of students to drive and perform a task with the robot (usually the students perform better =)).

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

P-CEP has a Club Night were all the 8th graders from the 5 middle schools come to the Park and can walk around and sign up for whatever clubs and/or teams the want to join next year. This year we were going to drive our 2002 robot Ziff around but due to some problem it wasn't working but just having it sitting there not moving drew one of the largest crowds I saw that night.

Now after we got Ziff fixed we have been once again rideing around in the hallways at lunch no less so that gets attention from both students and teachers. Those rotating lights really get people's attention.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

I'm still suprised that we get away with riding Ziff 1.0 around.

Re: Way to get kids to join a team
 

What we do:
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