Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

So if someone doesn't make grades, or gets suspended for hacking the network, never shows up, or some other awful thing, (s)he can still be on the team?

If no, then you already have a rule that limits the number of team members.

Don

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

We will initially accept all applicants - The team becomes 'self-selecting' because the activities and workload will filter out those that don't become inspired, or are not willing to work, etc.

disciplinary issues are easy - the minimum criteria is set by the school district and we can add more to that. That is another form of self-selection.

Just because a student is enrolled in a school doesn't mean that they will pass classes and graduate.

Just because a student's name is on the team roster early in the season doesn't mean they will maintain eligibility to attend a competition or remain on the roster at year end. A certain level of participation is required. And a higher level is required to 'letter'.

Ed

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

We are considered a home school team but allow students from any area schools to join. We are not connected with any school and are able to allow students of good Character to join, but if some one is causing trouble or safty problems we can ask them to leave. Doing this we end up with great students that want to be thier and actualy become close frends. It also gives a chance for students from schools with out a team to get involved in FIRST. Unfortunately most schools do not allow students from other school to join thier team but wouldn't it be a nice idea. We usually have 10 to 19 students in a year and they cycle through the week and at any given time we have about 6 ro 7 students avalable to work on the robot. This works very well and allows all the students to be part of the robot build. On Saturday every body shows up and then we have our hands full but with helpfull parents bringing food and drink we all have a good time.

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

Yes that team size of 20 with 6 cycling through per session works very well. We do the same. Saturdays are a challenge because most all people show up, but we also have the most mentors that day too. The mentors and team leadership have to get their head around how to handle the large Saturday event.

During the build, we do Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 4 to 7 (sometimes finishing earlier) and Saturday 9 to 4.

Re disciplinary issues: School district policy is almost always in place regarding issues of behavior and grades and such. Finding out the policy rules is good for the team to know and is available from the administration. Obviously home schools are different.

Some schools don't allow students from other schools or from home schools, some do. Policy across the country varies by school district.

Many school districts allow students from other high schools across the county school district to participate on a single team. I think Gwinnett County GA, Horry and Marion County SC is in that category.

I know there are school districts that allow home schoolers to participate on a high school team. I cannot think of a specific example but I have seen them. Cobb County GA doesn't. To a large degree I think this issue is dependent on how the local political wind is blowing. You would think that since home school parents are tax payers also they would have eligibility to participate. Districts that disallow participation don't want to open the 'can of worms' regarding home schools because then they would have to allow home school students to participate in other activities and the district isn't prepared for the administrative burden required to manage it.

The districts that do allow it have obviously found a way to handle it. One potential problem with public school students participating with home school teams is related to how does the public school student get the day off to participate at competition. If the school doesn't want to support a team, and doesn't want to support a student on another team, then that is a big problem. Again, your mileage will vary, depending on your local political/administrative winds.

Outside of the home school issue, Cobb County is highly supportive of FIRST.

Ed

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

We have no size limit as of now but currently we do have a semester long "tryout" to join the team, that pretty much consists of mentoring FLL teams and hosting several robotics competitions. Afterwards there is an interview but usually most people who have been active been active and have met the grades requirements are welcomed aboard.

Pavan.

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

What you are talking about is restricting a person from participating on a team. However, what I meant was that there is no rule regarding the number of students allowed on said team. The two things are definitely not the same. We have actually had some of these cases (sadly) regarding members of the team, and they were removed for some reason or the other. But that still does not deter any number of well behaved students from joining. But I sort of get what you mean.

EDIT: lol, I am actually wearing a 1676 shirt while writing this. hehehe =)

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

We set it up at our school, we do in house VEX Competitions, we even have one where the 2 other high schools in our district compete. So 3-4 student will build a robot for this, and last year I want to say each school brought 5-6 teams. This gives the newer guys a chance to see what it about, and see if they want to step up to the FIRST team. We also have 2 different sections of robotics at our school. The first class is Building Basic Robots, where students will build lego and VEX robots, and some ROV's, and this class is open to everyone. The next section is Robotics Engineering which is an ROP course open to Juniors and Seniors, in these classes we work on the FRC, FVC, and the MATE Underwater Competition. Unfortunetly the FRC team is the most neglected, and we are still trying to develop how the program will work. But we get a new building that will be exclusive for ROP, and Robotics is pretty much the Only ROP class. So we shall see...

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

We don't limit the size... I think we find the team self limits it's self.

We started at 15 people in 2002.
Then 35 in '03
Then 65 in '04
Then 70 in '05
Then 70 in '06

You should experience a Saturday Build with 35-40 students and 3 mentors, where 97% of people have something to do... it's just incredible. And incredibly difficult to pull off, sadly.

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

Don't forget all the "non-gearhead jobs". There is a limit to how many people can be hands-on on the robot at any given time, but there are also:

Webmasters
Animators
Photographers
Videographers
Writers
Logistics Specialists (travel, hotels, shipping)
Accountants
Graphic Designers

etc.

While our team started out as a bunch of gearheads from the tech studies department, once we had enough sponsorship to support a larger team (thank you, again, General Motors Canada) we were able to partner up with our school's business education and math departments and involve an entirely different group of students in the team. For many of these students this was their first exposure to a technical project, and while their job may have been writing about the project, understanding torque, power, current, centre of gravity and coefficients of friction well enough to write about them was a great educational opportunity.

One of the great things about FIRST is that it scales very nicely from small teams of "builders" focussed on a robot, to large teams of people from a broad range of backgrounds.

Jason

Re: Number of members allowed in a team
 

294 hasn't had a size limit in recent years.

We've had up to 20 kids I think, the only problem is that with that many, we got 4-5 we had to babysit the whole time.

I think there shouldn't be a max, just the ability to remove who really don't belong (I'm talking about behavior issues).