Hah....hah....there could be a 5th year.
Well I am just giving you examples, some teams continue on to college....
I know of a group of FIRST Robotics Seniors that go to same college and now work on Quad-copters and participate on Quad-copter competitions, while other go to do the summer camp as I mentioned or others go on to mentor their old FIRST Robotic teams. Are the seniors on your team involved, or does it stop at the 4th year of High School ?.
I think 12 is a good number, 30 is too big but that's my personal opinion.
I usually don't get involved with "changing teams" I usually work with new teams, or teams that are facing some kind of challenge and ask me to get involved.
You bring a good point in the cost density, and that's one of the things we look comparing the total cost of the program compared with total volunteers hours the team do for a season. Example : Let's say I have robotics program that total cost is $10,000 a year and I have 10 volunteers and each volunteer do 40 hrs a season, then we have 400 hrs for one season, if we say that the volunteer hour is valued at $20, we have $8,000 So the Return on investment (ROI) is $8,000/$10,000 = 0.8
Compared to a program that is $1,200 for 6 volunteers at 10 hrs a season. We have 60 hrs * $20 = $1,200, giving us an ROI = 1.0. So in this case the lower cost program is more efficient.
There is a lot analysis that can be done, but mostly I help new teams and usually the teams are small and the mentors are able to get everyone engaged.
I see on your bio, you are in PA. If you are interested in starting a virtual learning community in PA for FRC, let me know. We would meet on a telecom at 8PM Central time on Mondays, starting in January and go until Championship. The telecom is for mentors/coaches, and I would require 3 to 5 mentors committed to attend the telecom, I prefer they be from different teams in PA, but it is not a requirement.
I currently hold one for SoCal at 9PM Central time on Mondays. And another telecom for Arizona mentors on as needed basis.
Cheers,
Mark.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Siri
Wait, so what's year 5? Do they go back to not having a competition, or do they continue in FRC? Is this a scale up program, or a four-year rotation? I think you had a lot of people around here very confused...
As far as a kids' interest/inspiring those not predisposed, but concern is not just that they'll have different interest levels in different programs, but that the change itself is unnecessarily difficult. However, I had no idea that the groups were so small and operable on an individual basis. If you're not losing the edge-case kids, then I guess there's no worry. I'd envisioned you like rotating the entire state of Delaware (re: FIRST State) through a different program every year, so my head was spinning.
How well does it work to limit FRC teams to 10 students (2 per area)? That seems like it would actually skyrocket the cost density (geographically), not to mention really pressure the small teams. Do you still reach outlier students with the potentially lower word-of-mouth traffic?
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