Quote:
Originally Posted by martin417
While I agree that "students should be learning" (that is what a student does), I think you are misinformed as to the purpose of FIRST. We are not trying to teach kids to be an engineer or to design a robot, or even to machine parts. The purpose of FIRST is to INSPIRE kids, to make them take a look at engineering and technology as a career choice. If they learn something about CAD, or designing, or machining, that's just a bonus.
Using our model, how successful has our team been at that goal? Let's look at a few examples. The founder of the team graduated from MIT and is a grad student there now. Not the best example because he was destined to be an engineer from the day he was born. In 2009, 100% of the seniors on the team went on to college in engineering. I know of three that had never thought of engineering as a career before being involved with the team. By the way, all three of those happened to be girls. I consider that special because there are so few women that choose engineering as a career. In 2010, only one of the seniors did not choose engineering. She wanted to be a veterinarian. she has since thought about it and may change her major to biomedical engineering. Last year, we again had 100% of the seniors go into engineering. This year's crop are all planning to go into engineering. Every year, a high percentage of the team is female.
So is our model successful in inspiring kids to go into engineering and technology fields? I doubt you will find anyone who can honestly say that it is not.
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This is not a new debate. A lot of folks think that T in FIRST is teaching and forget that the I is for Inspiration.
Inspiration is the yardstick that all things FIRST should be measured against (imho). It the kids learning new skills gets us to more inspired kids then let's get teaching. If kids seeing engineers and scientists do their magic behind a glass window gets kids inspired, then let's do more of that. The I think the optimal case is somewhere in between.
Two things that we should keep in mind.
First, it is about more than the kids on FIRST teams. I really believe that if it is about just our kids on our teams, then FRC is a very inefficient vehicle. Really. I am sure that my kids would be just a psyched about competing in a half dozen (much easier and much cheaper) robot competitions. I am equally sure that the community AROUND my team would not be as impressed with a tabletop robot competition. The size and spectacle of FRC make an impact that justifies the difficulty and expense (again, imho).
Second, I STILL think back to Hexcaliber, my rookie rookie year (the first year I was a rookie ;-) Our team was lucky to have a robot at all with all the mistakes I made designing that robot. And here was Hexcaliber. You could literally shave by looking at the mirror shine they had on their seat motor cans. I have no idea if how much the kids on that team did, but I can assure you, our kids were really impressed ("Not only does that machine kill at playing the game, they had enough time and energy to polished their MOTORS!"). We all swore that next year, our robot would be awe inspiring as well.
So... ...this is an age old debate. I know which side I come down on.
Joe J.