Re: Another Culture Change
 

ok the second item on that objectionable list is 100% true

If you don't believe that a student built robot is better than one built by a professional then why does FIRST even exist??

Of course student built robots are better because they are what we are trying to produce from FIRST. Should you go around a regional stating you have a student built robot? No. But that doesn't mean you're 100% wrong.

Student built robots are 100% better than any robot built by any hands that are not connected to a student.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

I will agree with two points you made:

1) The students on WildStang are probably not 10 times more special than students on other teams.

and

2) The mentors are what makes the consistently great teams consistently great.

However, I very much disagree with the leap from "the mentors are what makes a team consistently great" to "the mentors do everything".

High school sports is a great example. Every state has teams that are elite year after year in a given sport (around here Farmington Hills Harrison football is a great example). Are their students inherently superior in football every year? No - it's the coaches that are the common factor (like the mentors in FIRST).

Do we now make the leap that the coaches must be donning masks to look like teenagers and play quarterback and running back? It's pretty obvious that they aren't doing that. The job of the coaches is to have a winning SYSTEM, and a METHOD to teach and apply the system.

If adults instill consistently elite programs with high school kids playing football, why can't the same be done in robotics?

Re: Another Culture Change
 

To inspire people to be more aware and interested in science and technology. The robot, as we're CONSTANTLY reminded, is just a vessel. Whether that vessel is student or mentor built doesn't concern me as much as what the student takes away as from the experience.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

But if the mentor builds the robot how can the students take anything away??

Re: Another Culture Change
 

Why are you assuming mentors build entire robots for some teams? I think that is a big 'if'.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

Ask FIRST why it exists. You'll get this answer:

There's nothing in FIRST's mission that supports a proposal that 100% student-built robots are preferable to partnership-built robots.

Even supposing that there exist such 100% mentor-built robots, that's an easy question to answer. The thing about FIRST that distinguishes it from basically every other superficially similar organization is the emphasis on mentoring by professionals. Bringing students through a disciplined engineering process gives them the knowledge that such processes are important for consistent success. Showing students how to do analysis and design gives them the right idea about real-world engineering and technology.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

I would argue that, more so than any other style team, elite level powerhouse teams teach their students the most valuable lesson they can learn in FIRST; Teaching students how to win.

Teaching students to work hard, smart, and for very long hours (many more than most would think) to achieve a goal at the highest level is an extremely valuable lesson. Achieving a goal by merely finishing, or reaching mediocrity is not acceptable; Excellence is the only satisfactory result.

I will probably get flack for implying that non-elite teams don't teach their students this, but it's true (they teach students to finish, but allow them to settle at less than perfection); They simply aren't on the same level. If they were, the results would be more equivalent.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

I pretty much 100% agree with this. I don't think this should get flack, because on my old team there was always the attitude that I hated of "hey it works!" and "its good enough." (They have drastically changed this mentality). Elite teams do not share this mentality. They do not compromise.

I especially love the highlighted part. This is because I have always felt that if you are paying large amounts of money to compete in FRC, why would you waste your time and not put 150% of your time and effort into the program? I firmly believe this quote goes along with the other quotes in my signature.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

There really is a lot to learn from reading through this thread. I have had the fortunate experience of traveling around my region to help support teams, both new and veteran, who ask questions along these lines. After hearing the question I remind them of what the mission of FIRST is, that one of the great things about FIRST is the mentor component, and I tell them that you get from the experience what you put into it. There are just as many team setups as there are teams in the entire organization. Everyone has different resources and means to achieve the ends, inspiration.

Whenever my team attends a competition, my mentors and I tell our students to go learn something. It can be anything technical or non-technical, and we learn a lot! The mentors make it a point to do the same with the students. From doing this, we are all able to walk out knowing that we will continue to improve for the future.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

I couldn't agree more with this statement. Our team has struggled in the past on the distribution between mentor and student design. The main goal of FIRST is to 'inspire' students to take interest in science and technology, not to build a robot.

What we have found is that a careful balance is needed to teach the students the design process, but not expect them to design everything. For Lunacy, the mentors did all of the calculations to determine how much stored energy was required to propel the ball over the goal and implemented that design criteria into an actual subsystem design. However, the students were there every step of the way and helped fabricate and build the design. By the end of the process they understood that mathematics can be applied into real world scenarios and saw the outcome of the application. At the end of the design almost all students could recite the process of how they went from an idea to a product. This is much better than trying to show applications of math by figuring out where two trains leaving two stations at different times and different speeds meet each other :)

We need to remember that constantly we hear that FIRST is 'not about the robot,' but inspiring young people to have the same passion for engineering that the mentor's have. Every team will do this a different way and there will never be a 'right' and 'wrong' way of doing it.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

None of our students realized that simply adding a gusset to our lift arm would reduce the torque required by the motor by 43%. Indeed, most of our mentors didn't either...

...but it took our Woodie Flowers Award-winning mentor to walk kids through the design, why it was a good idea, and how to do it properly. None of them would have been ABLE to do it.

I see little value in a bunch of kids sitting around sharing their ignorance. They might learn something, sure -- but they won't be using the engineering design process all that well, and they won't be learning nearly as much.

There's nothing, and I mean NOTHING, wrong with learning from mentors as they help you design a robot, even if that means that sometimes the mentors shoulder some of the design work themselves.

This entire argument of student-vs-mentor built is silly. All-student-built robots might have their place (though I doubt there is truly such thing), as do student-and-mentor built robots, and even all-mentor-built robots (though I really, really, REALLY doubt there is such thing).

Re: Another Culture Change
 

Depends on the person to be fair; some students will not take anything away under such conditions.

There is however more to robotics than the robot. Business skills, PR, community outreach, website involvement, people skills, a sense of community, networking all are taught through FIRST absent the robot.

I personally am the CAD group leader on my team. I do not intend to go into designing, but into management, public relations, or marketing. Why? Because I've learned through FIRST that I find my greatest joy in working with people. I'd call this FIRST inspiration, even if it didn't come from building a bot!

Re: Another Culture Change
 

I think we need to discern between "student built", "student fabricated" and "student designed"

On my team, mentors have little, if any, input into the machining process, but once our all student machining team finishes it's stuff, it goes to a coalition of students and mentors. Design is likewise: Students work with mentors on the design (though the design is decided by popular vote of students, and calculations are done by students. CAD is also 100% student based.) However, there is always a mentor assigned to a design team to help guide it from doing stupid things.

Yes, of course our mentors help in the building, its their favorite part! And how could we deny them it!

Re: Another Culture Change
 

This is an interesting topic, and probably deserves its own discussion.

Our team has a good mixture of students that are there because they really want to learn about this stuff, and students that don't start out so interested (and in-between of course). You have to have the driven personalities to make things go, but the other end of the spectrum has a lot to get out of this program.

We request that teachers send students to us that they see as having a lot of potential, but maybe haven't found a reason to put that potential to good use. We commit to trying to win the competition and we play on the competitive spirit of human nature to trick these students into getting heavily involved. Before long, some of them are finding that they like this stuff and that gives them a reason get motivated. It doesn't always work, but we try our best.

Re: Another Culture Change
 

I had the pleasure of attending the Pittsburgh Regional with my son's team, and had some nice conversations with a few of 1114's mentors. I know my son's team had some discussions/interactions with students from 1114, all of which he described in positive terms. My son's team has had interactions with Simbotics at other events, and his team has always enjoyed rising to the new level of competition that 1114 brings to any event they attend.

During the first rounds of the eliminations, there was a human player that appeared to be attempting to damage their bot, or at least get it to drop a tube. They were awarded a red card for this, and rightfully so. I don't know if it ended there; I hope they were told that kind of stuff won't be tolerated. Maybe there needs to be a penalty that follows you to your next event...kind of like a Flagrant Foul in basketball. I didn't see any boo'ing in the stands, and I was only in the pits minimally so I certainly didn't witness anything there. I will say I attempted to talk to some adults from an unruly team that was near us in the stands. ("When your kids do this, this is how affects us.") We got nowhere with them. We shook it off, and our students just dealt with it showing the professionalism you expect from an FRC team.

I certainly hope to see Simbotics at Pittsburgh next year. They are an awesome team, with great drive and focus. I had a great time cheering them on during practice, qualification and eliminations. I know somewhere on this message board I read the following quote- “Instead of wanted to beat them, we now want to be like them.” I think it is a process for kids (and some adults!)…first they see greatness and are intimidated, they have to stick around long enough to appreciate greatness and recognize what can be taken from the experience.