Thread: Why Robots?
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Unread 13-09-2012, 18:53
MrBasse MrBasse is offline
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Re: Why Robots?

From a teacher's standpoint, FIRST has been a wonderful program for me due to a couple of pretty important reasons. As a part of my funding I am required to offer a Career and Technical Student Organization (CTSO). To fulfill this I have a few options: SkillsUSA, Michigan Industrial Technology Education Society (MITES), or through some work on my end, FIRST Robotics. The basic requirement is that it is a student led group that involves regular meetings and competition with other high school programs.

I still send kids work off to MITES for judging when I have good drawings to enter, and I send off posters every year to the North American Auto Show each spring. But I have never gotten the same satisfaction from those contests as I have from FIRST. To mail a drawing in and get a ribbon back a few months later is nice, but to build a machine based on a challenging task and compete with it in front of thousands of people has been so much more rewarding as a teacher. I get to see the instant reaction of my students as they realize that what they are doing is directly related to real life problems even if it is presented in the form of a game. Then I get to see their reactions when they realize that there are professionals from local industry that are willing to help them with a project like this if only they ask. And finally I get to see students who came into my room as freshman that were too nervous to talk to anyone but me and a handful of other students, give a presentation to all 106 members of my school staff to explain what they accomplished that year. Those are things that you just can't learn from mailing a drawing that you worked on for a few hours in to a competition.

I have a lot of respect for MITES and what they do, but I think that FIRST has simply gone above and beyond with the program they've assembled and the message they relay.

With that being said, we also build an electric race car as a part of the National Electric Cart Association (NECA) in the fall to race in the spring. That program is new to us, but seems like it can be a great off season project to do some team building and have some fun at the end of the school year by letting kids get out on the track and race other high schools from Michigan and around the country.

Between those two things and my 16 month old daughter, I don't have much else for spare time unfortunately...
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