Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

You have heard of the three 'r's.

We are talking about the three 'I's.

Last April Dr. Karan Watson gave the keynote speech on the Engineer of the Future 2.0 at Olin University, Dr. Woodie Flowers followed with his speech on educational reform, and then at FIRST Conferences our team presented on FIRSTsteps, which is based in part on work by Clay Shirky.

We talked a lot about institutional barriers, getting around them, coordinating responses to the 'institution'. Karan talked at length at institutional change.

The Three 'I's are:

a) initiate
b) implement
c) institutionalize

200,000 students, 85,000 volunteers, and about 18,000 teams of FIRST have accomplished (a) and (b)

We have to accomplish (c). It will have to become the policy (budget and direction) of the institution (local schools, boards, boe, state boe, etc) to support robotics and other STEM activities.


The award gets paid to teachers, not mentors. Art pointed out a lot of interesting stuff but... I'd keep that stuff in the thread and out of a presentation. Pretty 'wonky' stuff and it isn't necessary in an executive presentation. There are a few slides that explains that in pictures in seconds.


It isn't a scientific study but my travels tell me that the 'institution' telegraphs the message to teachers that robotics isn't important because "we are not going to pay you to do this". "We will pay you to coach the ball kickers, the horn blowers, and the thespians, but not the robotics folks." The institutional message has to change.


Any Congressman can attend the briefings or join the caucus by contacting one of the co-chair offices list here They do not have to actually join the caucus but can if they like.


At risk of kicking off a whole new debate I'll put forth what I think the model for robotics should be.

At our school things like the competitive marching band, football, and other stuff is paid for by booster organizations. The teachers receive stipends for their additional efforts. There are part time staffers that support some of these organizations that are paid for by booster, not the schools. Everyone else is an unpaid volunteer parent/mentor.

This model works well and have been around a long time and is likely to be unchanged and also likely to be cited as an example of how to run a program.

The robotics competition (using Dean's sports model) is a co-cirricular activitity that reinforces classroom learning. It is NOT an extra-cirricular activity IMHO. The distinction is important. The presentation to the institution is important. An army of institutional warriers have deemed the cirriculum to be the most important thing they have and our activity is co-cirricular reinforcement, not some little club spinning off into space.


Back to FIRSTsteps, coordination & collaboration.
Without getting into the Phd stuff on the flat space of social networking and policy wonking......

If we can craft an intelligent proposal for legislation and policy, and get 100+ mentors to undersign it and we give it to the caucus that will be a powerful statement. One of three things would then happen.

a) they accept it
b) they reject it
c) or worst of all - they send it out for study.

Calling all mentors !!!

Ed

PS - see Corky the Robot clean up the lake right here

.

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

ebarker, do you have links to your executive level presentation? Would love to adapt it for our use if that is OK with you.

Thanks

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

extremely ok. give me a couple of days to post it.

we have been in a mad scramble for months. we were going to do a video version but the day our shoot was going to happen got rescheduled 3 times for different things we had to do. After GRITS it looked like we would get a breather but right now Atlanta is really wet, schools are closed, people are spread around. it is a mess.

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

I have no experience in how to 'craft an intelligent proposal for legislation and policy' but I'm willing to learn and to help, Ed.

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

If I understand the scenario correctly, the government steered a huge slice of stimulus money ($100B) to education, and the Education Secretary has about a $5B personal account to spend as he wishes, all done without any planning or identified need for the money. Yikes.

I give full credit to President Obama if he is able to enact his education reform agenda and increase the accountability of teachers and schools. That’s probably where the best bang for the buck is e.g. linking teacher merit pay to student performance. In that regard, spending the $5B on teacher stipends for supporting robotics teams or other activities is probably going to have a very positive affect. But I’m glad I don’t have the power to spend $5B of other peoples money as I please, that’s outright crazy.

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

definitely crazy - I'm straining trying to figure out how to spend more than 100 M if you fully funded all robotics program, FIRST and non-FIRST, plus teacher development, plus stipends.

That is only 1/50th of the 5B. Is that 5B over next year, or the next 10 years ? what are the time units ?

Ed

edit: I think this is the route to your questions, drink lots of coffee before reading http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/index.html

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:

September 14, 2009 Laurie Pianka, SIATech

408.421.2718 laurie.pianka@siatech.org

Linda Collins Leigh, SIATech

760.994.6587

linda.leigh@siatech.org





ADVISORY / PREVIOUS HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS TO BE HONORED IN WASHINGTON, DC, ON SEPTEMBER 23
SIATech Students from San Jose Job Corps Center Recognized for their Robotics Team which Successfully Competed with Top Schools and Students in Remarkable Season



Washington, DC—The School for Integrated Academics and Technologies, a network of public charter high schools focused on dropout recovery, announces its San Jose Robotics team will participate in Job Corps Day on Capitol Hill on September 23, 2009. Four student team members and several team mentors will put on a Robotics demonstration in the Rayburn House office building. Later that evening, the students will act as greeters at the Oratory Competition at the Capitol Visitor’s Center.



WHAT: An opportunity to meet with previous dropouts who dramatically turned their lives around. These students returned to school at SIATech, joined the Robotics team, and traveled the country to compete against the elite students and schools in the country. The students will be honored as part of the Department of Labor’s Job Corps Day: “45 Years of Building Lives and Launching Careers” Celebration.



WHO: SIATech at San Jose Job Corps’ Robotics Team Members and Mentors (Team 1834, Evolution). Special guests include: Members of Congress invited to demonstration times.



WHEN: Wednesday, September 23, 2009, Complete Event Agenda

Robotics Exhibit Booth, 9:00 am – 4:30 pm (Eastern)

Robotics Demonstration, 11:30 am – 12:30 pm and 2:30 – 3:30 pm (Eastern)

Greeters prior to Oratory Competition, 4:30 – 5:30 pm (Eastern)



WHERE: Rayburn House Office Building, Foyer (Robotics Exhibit Booth and Demonstration)

Capitol Visitor’s Center, Orientation Theatre (Greeters at Oratory Competition)



About SIATech

The School for Integrated Academics and Technologies (SIATech®) is an award-winning dropout recovery program. SIATech is a fully accredited public charter high school that operates in partnership with the federal Job Corps program. The school serves low-income, previously out-of-school youth. SIATech excels at identifying student strengths and individualizing instruction to meet each student’s needs and goals. The school’s safe and caring setting enables students to take charge of their learning and obtain the tools they need for lifetime success, whether it is at their chosen career or further education. More than 8,500 out-of-school youth have graduated from SIATech’s 14 campuses. More information www.siatech.org.



About Job Corps

Job Corps is a voluntary program under the Department of Labor that provides outreach to disadvantaged urban youth, who have either had difficulty in traditional high school programs, dropped out of school, or are facing academic and/or personal challenges that make attending a traditional high school difficult or impossible. Job Corps is a free education and training program that helps young people learn a career, complete high school, and find and keep a good job. There are seven Job Corps centers in California and 122 centers nationwide. Click here for a history of Job Corps. More information www.jobcorps.gov.



About Robotics Team 1834 Evolution

Each SIATech student is a previous dropout who has a remarkable story of overcoming adversity. Robotics gives students experience in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and provides an exciting hands-on opportunity for students to realize they can be successful in higher education and high-tech careers.



Team 1834 Evolution from the San Jose Job Corps Center earned many awards and honors. The team earned the Judges’ Award at the prestigious Silicon Valley Regional. The team earned the Engineering Inspiration Award at the Hawaiian Regional in Honolulu. This award qualified the team to participate in the World Championships. At the FIRST Robotics World Championships the team earned 15th place out of 87 teams in their division. After season completion, the team was honored by State Senator Elaine Alquist on the floor of the California State Capitol in Sacramento. The Washington, DC, demonstration will be the climactic conclusion to the season.



About US FIRST Robotics

US FIRST Robotics is a worldwide competition where teams solve an identical problem during a six-week timeframe using a standard kit of parts. Students are rewarded for excellence in design, team spirit, gracious professionalism and maturity, and the ability to overcome life’s obstacles. More information http://www.usfirst.org/.

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

Wikipedia has a reasonable article on teacher merit pay at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_pay. Without getting in to the argument here, I would just suggest that like most stories, there are two sides to this one.

I will also suggest that $5 billion might not be such a crazy amount of money to spread across the United States. There are roughly 50 million K-12 students in the USA, so that is only about $100 per student. Even the larger figure of $100 billion for education... which really is a staggering number... is not so large when the overall size of the education system is considered, especially if it is spread across several years.

I hope the money is spent wisely. I might be biased, but I do consider education to be more of an investment than an expenditure.

Jason

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

Thank you Jenny for posting this. We need to bring these great teams into the public light to help get the message across.

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

I also hope the money is spent wisely, but I'm not so optimistic that the best investments will be made with these funds.

For example: a local high school, struggling to meet API scores, "invests" in a new artificial surface football field. Meanwhile, the CAD teacher cannot get computers that runs the CAD program, so the class is little more than study-hall. What is the Board of Education thinking???

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

The comments that I've deleted were not helpful and just because I'm annoyed at the way the quality of education of our nation's children and our future seems to be constantly compromised and challenged, is no reason for me to take the low road. I apologize.

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

The 5B doesn't bother me so much as how US Dept of Ed says how to spend it.

It is such a long long way from the bureaucracy that administers the money to the classroom. When you read some of these documents you begin to wonder if the administrators in Washington and the classroom teachers even speak the same language and live on the same planet.

If you go read the Ed.gov documents you always see a lot about 'programs that target x and y'. So after a lot of work a school district design a plan, pursues a grant to do 'x' or 'y', then does the plan, then does a ton of assessment and send the answers back to get put in the wooden crate next to the other wooden crates you see in the movies. And then whatever they did probably doesn't get replicated anywhere else.

They are funding a search for solutions. We have a solution in hand but without funding. As a politician told me recently - "this is the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth".

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

This is why I certainly hope that Obama makes good on his promise to bring the government into the Web 2.0 generation with increased transparency. Simply putting all declassified records online in the public domain an accessible manner would be a great asset to this country, both to see existing progress and to hold elected officials accountable.

But even without this new transparency, if there are great ideas that get forgotten in wooden creates, then shame on us, the constituents. We all vote the elected officials into their positions, and we all have a responsibility to make sure they are looking out for our interests, whether it's at the voting box, writing letters to our politicians, going door-to-door, connecting and discussing matters with family, friends, and neighbors, organizing rallies or protests, or just making sure our voices are heard.

As soon as we let our cynicism of the ability of the our government to do anything right overtake our motivation to make our government better, that's when it actually will do nothing right. But if we are both optimistic and motivated, then anything is possible. Three years ago, Obama was an incredibly long-shot contender for President, simply because most people back then weren't expecting such a huge number of optimistic, motivated people coming together and backing him.

If we as a community can really rally behind a clear and concise set of goals, then I see no problems in securing funding for FIRST from the government. But right now, neither Dean nor FIRST have given teams clear and concise goals on what they believe should be the optimal role of our government in FIRST. Instead, teams everywhere are doing disparate campaigns in their local regions, to limited success. If we want true success, we need a national campaign.

To really put the FIRST community on the right track, Dean needs to do the equivalent of Obama's health care speech before Congress earlier this month. It needs to be powerful, it needs to be emotional, it needs to be motivational, and it needs to set clear and concise goals of what constitutes success. Maybe it even means Woodie would be the one to give such a speech, as he's a much better orator.

FIRST has been working on their alumni database, now's the time to use it. Start sending our emails at least once every week or two to everyone. (Don't worry too much that an email a week is too much, as the ones who are too bothered by receiving an email asking for help every week or two probably couldn't be bothered to actually help at all). Ask them for a donation, ask them for support, and nurture a positive relationship between the community at large and the goals of the organization. Organize rallies, in highly visible places. Get local teams to bring their robots to the State House, with everyone wearing their team tee-shirts and bringing rally signs.

The scale of these rallies needs to be big, much bigger than currently. And the only way this will work is if the really gung-ho teams get their other local teams to participate as well. Having one team do all the public relations work for FIRST in a region will help them personally fill their trophy case with EI or CA trophies, but it doesn't help the FIRST community in general as much as having all teams contribute more. A large number of moderately enthusiastic voices are much more effective at swaying opinion than a small but highly vocal minority.

These rallies and public events need to start everywhere, because it takes a lot of "infrastructure" to really pull off a successful national rally in Washington. It takes a lot of connections, it takes a lot of people, it takes a lot of confidence that these people actually will show up. The last one is the most crucial, with the only way of having genuine confidence being positive track records that speak for themselves.

For if FIRST doesn't start "getting" this soon, I fear their ambitious plans for a national march in Washington in time for their 20th anniversary in 2011 will be but a fraction of the success they could have been, had there been a much more rigorous grassroots effort behind it. So I'd seriously suggest they carefully examine and learn from the 2008 Obama campaign for their public relations and grassroots efforts. Keep it positive, keep it motivated, and gently but forcibly hold people's feet to the fire by telling them that if this is what they genuinely believe in, then need to show it, and they need to act.

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

Art,

Your remarks are right on the mark. We (the entire FIRST community) needs to make it's collective voice heard. We don't need to wait until Kickoff to get a new homework assignment.

Contact the White House at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Re: FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy
 

This is news to me. Can you kindly direct us to more information regarding this future event?

Thank you.

Jane