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Re: Engineering and Robotics program in danger
Siri,
Thank you for your post, I think the one thing I think is key is to have someone that looks at the program from a long term perspective. My recommendation is 12 years, so if I am starting the program new in a community, I look for parents that have students in Elementary School or teachers. And I coordinate meetings for them at public places such as Yogurt shops. Once you have a core group of 3 to 5 folks, we move the meetings from quarterly to monthlly on telecom.
You bring a good point that LEGO mindstorms bring more folks to join, but that's counter to our strategy, in the beginning we want to find the "hard core students", the ones willing to engage without the "gritter" and once we have those parents engaged, them we discuss with them what platform they like to engage and ideas of fundraising the money.
A key of the program is to be "platform neutral", so we at Mark Chew Academy, we do not favor a platform over another, since we really have no "vested interest".
Once the 3-5 leaders figure out what they like to do, I work with them to find sponsors, and I keep teams at 7-12 students. If there is more interest we split the teams.
I write a paper every year on this subject, the latest published paper is enclosed.
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Mark Chew Academy
Cheers,
Marcos.
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