How to keep new students entertained?
 

I am the lead mentor / Instructor for the RoboNinjas, team 3195. This is only my second year of running this program for the school and would like the input of veteran team members, as well as fellow mentors and instructors on this subject:

- How do you keep your students entertained during the pre-season? :eek: :confused:
Mind you, this is only our second year so we do not have that much in the way of funding, or in the way of previous robots to let the new students build with. What do you suggest as activities to get them involved with robotics and keep them actively engaged (aka - NOT BORED!)

Thanks,

Jason
Lead Mentor of Team 3195

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

I'd start with fundraising. There are many fundraisers that can do double duty as fun activities to engage new and old students while earning you money or sponsorship. Public demonstrations for sponsors, selling concessions at a sports game, and "drive the robot" demos are all cool events that can be really fun for new students. One of my first memories on 1714 was letting some younger kids drive a little robot at a Vex demo, and it was definitely really fun and engaging to help other kids play with robots. From there, you should be able to get enough funding to work on a little pre season project.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Entertained is not the word you want. Enthused, active, productive, inspired - try those on for size.

I disagree somewhat with Chris on fundraising. New students who don't know much about the program won't be good ambassadors for your team in seeking funding. When the businessman or -woman being approached asks, "What good things has your team accomplished?", you'd better have a good answer! They can be involved in some outreach efforts, but you certainly need to have experienced students on hand to answer questions.

Education is a better pre-season approach. Certify the new students on the use of power tools. Teach one or two how the robot is programmed, how the sensors work. Explain drive train options - this works really well if you have 2 or 3 old robots to compare/contrast.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

VEX and FRC Workshops.

VEX is a great program and allows students to build robots with little to no experience coming in. Our vex team has no mentors and is completely student-run, allowing the students to learn through discovery and experimentation.

FRC workshops are a great way to get people trained for the busy build season. Try to make the workshops as interactive as possible in order to keep students interested.

Note: these are only the robot-related tasks that can happen in the pre-season. Other tasks such as outreach, graphic design, animation, publication-writing, finance planning, teambuilding, etc. are extremely important as well and the pre-season is a great time to get started on them.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Engaged is a good word, too.

Have a MOE scavenger hunt. Assign the MOE website for pre-season reading - with a deadline. Have them look at/investigate different sections, including the MOE Program and MOEmentum sections, for ideas/thoughts/suggestions as to a fun project or two that they would like to do. It is a way for new-ish mentors and teams to explore the possibilities of infinity and beyond. :)

Check out other websites of teams that you admire/respect and see if they offer any suggestions on what to do with off season and pre-season. MOE has one of the best, in my opinion. They have developed a very strong program and continue to strive for excellence in ways from which others can benefit.

Jane

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Training and fundraising usually bring teams together pretty well in the off-seasons. Both definitely need to happen, so why not use both activities to keep kids engaged? Instead of, say, having kids go out and sell HexBugs to their friends and family on their own, get them to bake things and sell them at a local market, where they can interact with each other. New recruits will learn about the team very quickly when people ask about the team, and the veteran students respond with similar information each time. And since you're still a pretty new team, there isn't any extensive history that the new students would need to know in order to explain what the team has done.

I would also suggest including some generally fun events to bring the team together; ones that have nothing to do with the robot. Go out and play Laser Tag. Have a LAN party in someone's basement. Play a game of baseball at a local park. Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. It's things like these that will forge friendships that don't just exist at robotics meetings, but during the school day as well.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Hopefully you're planning teambuilding exercises - short ones at the beginning of every meeting, longer ones or a half/whole day scheduled for the early fall once your student recruiting efforts are finished.

Training is really important, as others have already stated. Many teams use FTC as a way to get new students involved and for teaching purposes also.

Give new students responsibilities to get them engaged. Have them look at last year's kickoff/game manual and ask how they would play the game/design/build the robot. Then have the veteran team members explain why they made the decisions they made last January and asses how successful they were.

Take apart last year's robot and rebuild it!

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Although there have been disagreements, with good thinking attached, I actually agree about the fundraising. I'm not about to list all the ways our team has brought in funds over the years since I'm sure you could find that information by searching it - even probably in a thread in CD - but all of them involve the team working together. I was head of the business team on our team last year and will be one of our two captains this year so from my experience there really is no 'off-season' to FIRST - it's a year-round activity. When it's not build season and competition season there should be meetings for training (we call ours "Robot U"), larger fundraising activities, community work towards Chairman's, attending or hosting workshops, and of course FUN!... go to the movies as a team, play lazer tag, go out to dinner! The summer's almost over now so this would be for next year, but when school's out that's the best time to get a lot accomplished since everyone has their time freed up.

Hope this helps and good luck!! :)

-Gen

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

There's really nothing quite like building a robot, even a simple box on wheels. Here in Oregon we host the BunnyBot pre-season competition each fall. Last year's game can be seen at http://www.oregonfirst.org/regional-...bot-scrimmage/ . This year's game comes out September 11th. For BunnyBots we invent a new, simple game to be played with FRC-class robots on Saturday Dec 18th. Students learn a ton and some say it's more fun than FRC because the pressure-to-fun ratio is more tilted towards fun and newer members have a greater role.

San Diego has such a great community of teams you could probably get something similar going down there. If that's too much to take on, just have new members build something FRC-like and drive it around the school. You'll be amazed in the difference in energy level of those folks. I'd take apart last year's robot if need be to make it happen...I'm such a big fan of having a pre-season robot project.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

My experience mostly agrees with Dale on this one. You have to separate offseason activities into things that we need to do and things that we like to do. Most incoming students will be expecting to build robots ("it is robot club after all"), and so, at least to a certain degree, you have to oblige them. Unlike many of the more established teams, most students at your school will probably not know the total of what goes on in your team (yet they will still think they do), but you don't want to drive them away once you've got them in the door. Your team's job is to grow their enthusiasm in FIRST.

Try delegating responsibility for the have to tasks to veteran team members; since they have been through a season already, they will get why it's critical that you raise $10,000+, and will appreciate the responsibility. This does not mean that you deal them the task and forget them: they still need to know that you are supprting them and that it's ok if they experience failures (cite: JVN).

Another approach is to assign each of the new students to your mentors and the more mature of your veteran students, after talking to the veterans about what this means for them. Think apprenticeship program.

In regards to education, this can be a valid exercise, but needs to be implemented correctly. In my experience, if you (or your mentors, or ...) lecture at the students for more than a meeting or so, the students will start to wonder why they've signed up for another class. Some may like this, but there's a good chance many won't. Try the one-on-one (or up to about one-on-three) approach instead.

Specific ideas: Try having the some kids work on CAD (if you know it) as all this requires is access to a computer lab and they can create as many designs as they want. Having some sort of hands-on activity is critical, though, as many students (esp. freshmen) will not have the patience for CAD. VEX has also been mentioned, which is excellent if your team has $700-$1000 to spend on it (I believe this is about the price range actually needed). Also, try asking veteran teams in your area if they have any extra parts and material you could use if you can't afford your own (no matter what type of robot you build). Try to stay away from some of the more crafty hobby kits that are available or more DIY-type projects, as they usually require a fair amount of precision to get working and if you have a whole room of kids competing for your assistance, neither they nor you will be happy.

Also, try to find an offseason FRC competition near you. These are great ways for new students to get a feel for FIRST before the season starts.

--Ryan

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

We're active year-round now and run a summer program. Generally we focus on new technology areas which we feel will be useful for the team to understand better. We prototype & test our ideas and then document this work and the conclusions. This is a good intro for new students joining at the start of the summer (we always have a few).

In the fall, we've got a few things going on:
1) Fundraising (never stops)
2) Community outreach (local town festivals - sponsor demos - etc.)
3) Training - especially tool use and safe working processes
4) Training - CAD; drivetrain basics; pneumatics basics
5) Driving practice and try-outs
6) Offseason competitions - we do two fall competitions each year (Duel on the Delaware & Ramp Riot)

Hope this helps.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

In regards to education, this can be a valid exercise, but needs to be implemented correctly. In my experience, if you (or your mentors, or ...) lecture at the students for more than a meeting or so, the students will start to wonder why they've signed up for another class. Some may like this, but there's a good chance many won't. Try the one-on-one (or up to about one-on-three) approach instead.Specific ideas: Try having the some kids work on CAD (if you know it) as all this requires is access to a computer lab and they can create as many designs as they want. Having some sort of hands-on activity is critical, though, as many students (esp. freshmen) will not have the patience for CAD. VEX has also been mentioned, which is excellent if your team has $700-$1000 to spend on it (I believe this is about the price range actually needed). Also, try asking veteran teams in your area if they have any extra parts and material you could use if you can't afford your own (no matter what type of robot you build). Try to stay away from some of the more crafty hobby kits that are available or more DIY-type projects, as they usually require a fair amount of precision to get working and if you have a whole room of kids competing for your assistance, neither they nor you will be happy.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

While I appreciate the effort, copying and pasting a previous poster's reply doesn't really help much :(

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Thanks, I will keep those activities in mind. I'm actually thinking about bringing the CAD teacher at this school aboard (hopefully)

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Great suggestions, I will try to implement some of those ideas for this year :)

also, nice sig-pic, I remember the scene it was from, however i can't recall the name of the movie it was from! (D'OH!)

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Yes, the "Team San Diego" Devil Duckies used to host the "Battle at the Border" event at their highschool's gym, however since the last wildfires they have yet to restart that event. Unfortunately we are too young of a team and not well known enough to host such an event, though I love the idea!

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Gen,

Thanks for the ideas, I had completely forgotten about the chairman's award! I also like the idea of calling the off-season "Robot-U", mind if I borrow this? :p

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

A lot of great advice posted above. I would also suggest a couple quicky design challenges. These tend to be 30 minute challenges, but typically take about 1 hour to hand out materials and measure "winning" criteria. Marhsmallow tooth-pick towers are a good starter on these. Very simple and cheap. The idea is to promote small group collaborative effort. 4 is an ideal number of students and they have to find consensus without the "vote" option.
There are lots of other cheap mini-challenges like this and I can send you a link to some of my favorites.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

I would love to get that link. If you could post it in here that would be great (incase any other mentors with similar questions / issues come across this thread) :)

thanks!

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

With regards to fundraising, pair up experienced students with new students when you do it. The experienced student can offer what the team has done; the new student can observe and offer what they think the team is about.

The same goes for all the other things. Pair up veterans with rookies in whatever ratio is appropriate. Rookies learn. Veterans learn better (nothing like teaching something to learn it!).

Another great idea: Take any random old FRC game and sit all the students down in groups. Their objective: develop a strategy and design a robot to win the game. No, they don't have to build it, but it would have to be buildable. (Would also work with FTC and VRC games. Caution: before 1999, FRC games tended to be 1v1v1.) When January rolls around, the entire team benefits as they do the same thing. You could also develop your own game, but that might be a bit crazy.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Although a lot of FIRST is about the learning of science and engineering, we tend to use our Off-Season to spread the FIRST message to the community, but spread a different message within the team. Right when the school year starts we begin to train our new members in safety and some basics like CAD and electrics but the summer is a lot different. In our school we are considered as sport, and as a sport we hold a responsibility to act as a team: a group of people who come together to achieve a certain goal (or multiple goals). We try to spend our summers doing activities that bring us closer together as a team. Cheering on runners at our annual triathlon, or team soccer games/picnics. This gives opportunities for the older leaders of the team to really share experiences/memories with the younger members.

-There is nothing more gratifying than watching you robotics team succeed as a family rather than just a group of people when those 6 weeks begin. My advice would be to try to forge that family.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Challenge -> Design -> Build -> Play

That is the FRC modus operandi, and it's why "we" are all entertained. The sooner a student gets to experience all of these steps, the sooner they are "hooked". Off-season building (even a box on wheels), whether FRC or even FTC, Vex, or FLL, will let new students experience the payoff of their hardwork early, and inspiring them to continue further.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Thanks, that's my buddy Gune from Titan A.E. ;)

For a bunch of cool science-y statistics and experience on the marshmallow towers, check out this TED video from Tom Wujec (an Autodesk guy, it so happens); he's a fantastic speaker.

--Ryan

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

I think the link for design projects was:
http://pbskids.org/designsquad/

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Team 20 is looking into participating in a local Vex competition this year that would run from about September to December, with the idea being that more experienced students could be team mentors for the newer students in an almost entirely student constructed build that would not interfere with the FRC build or kickoff. Other good things to do would be to offer new students the opportunity to tag along on community outreach and robot demo events. We are also going to try a new idea, bringing new students along with the team to an offseason event in the fall to give the whole team a feel for what a FIRST competition experience is like (if that doesn't give them reason to stay interested in FIRST, it might be for them). It's more about inspiring new student as opposed to entertaining them. The sooner students get a feel for where they belong on the team and in the FIRST community, the sooner they can begin having a fun and enriching experience.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this:

Look around and reach out to local engineering companies or machine shops. We have the good fortune of living in the same city as a great company known as Isthmus Engineering & Manufacturing Co-op. They specialize automated machinery and construction, which is what we do in FRC, they just work on a lager scale.

We recently took a tour of their workshop with some of our newer students, and it was a great learning experience, as they had some great machinery to show off.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

That's actually a good idea for a "Wow, I could end up doing this someday" trip.

Contact your local major engineering place and see if you can get a field trip of their plant. (I know Northrop and a few other aerospace companies have stuff down there, but I'm not sure what else there is or what exactly they do.) Take the entire team. Not only do you get a wow moment, but you can pick up some useful tips if you pay attention.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Out of season my team has always fund-raised for the team, and has also held 'recruiting' days going out and doing charity events with the robot to show off FIRST.

Any event that had to do with engineering we've tried to become a part of to show the robot off.

At school we've held dances, contests and many ways to get other students interested in joining the teams.

Preseason is also a good time to review the past robot and what went wrong, and also to look for new drive train ideas used by other teams, and to train new team members and check up in software updates.

Also there are many pre and post season events to go to.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Tons of good advice here already, but I'll just add a pretty broad rule we tend to follow.

Keep it exciting regardless of what you are doing. Some students will find that fundraising, or organizing community outreach events is very fun, while others will be drawn to the design/building/testing of the robot. Its important to stress that everyone should be involved in every aspect to some degree. When this happens you will inevitably be putting someone in position they feel is "less fun" as something else on the team. The challenge as mentors, especially when it comes to new recruits, is to design the activities so it leaves the students coming back for more.

Re: How to keep new students entertained?
 

Teach them how difficult programming can be?

Grab a large gymnasium, fill it with cones and other random objects, and blindfold some old members. Let the new members direct the old members from one end of the gym to the other, without touching any of the random objects.

Then let the old members direct the new members. Should keep you entertained for the span of a meeting, excellent team building.



EDIT: as an added bonus, you could force the controller to stand in a fixed position, a driver's station