[TikiTech]

Aloha,

Sorry for the size of what you are or are not about to read.

As I agree with many of the comments in this thread, there are some I do not.
There are many threads about this that I have read. Negative remarks are in no way gracious or professional. Sadly they still occur.. That said....

There is nothing wrong with a student built robot. A great example would be our team, coming from a rural island in the middle of the pacific ocean that has no high tech industry on it. There are a few industries here, farming / ranching and tourism. The closest industrial area is a few islands away.

We have been operating since joining FIRST in 2011 with 3 mentors. None of us are engineers nor high tech industry professionals. We consist of a school CTE coordinator / teacher acting as our team management mentor, a metal shop / agriculture teacher that is our fabrication mentor and a middle school technology coordinator that handles the rest. We constantly work to expand our mentorship with out much luck, but we never give up looking. Any programming mentors on the west side of the Big Island? Come on by, Please!

We are inspired by the FIRST ideals. We as mentors are constantly trying to learn as much as possible to pass on to our students. Our drive has shown our students that just because you don't necessarily have the best resources available, that you can design, create and build a competitive robot. We as mentors are here to help guide the students through the entire process, giving advise on what has and can work. As well as helping the students imagination in designs become reality.

We have done so much within the community to raise awareness of STEM.
Starting many new programs and classes within the school and community.
Our community outreach is what defines our team.
We inspire the students to go beyond what they know of the island life.
I am proud to say that the students welded the entire robot, wired the electronics, wrote the code.
They are fiercely proud of it as well, and should be.

Does that make it the best robot? No.
Does that make it any more or less of an accomplishment? No.
Should they be thought of any less because of it. No.

When we take the students to the competition and they see some of the highly engineered and refined robots, it inspires them. It inspires the mentors too.

They are many skills as mentors we have learned because of our participation in FIRST that we would have never bothered to learn otherwise. CAD for example. Through my own drive to learn and teach the students CAD it has inspired the students to reach for and do more. They have designed this years VEX and FIRST robots in CAD. This has helped reduce the amount of wasted time and materials prototyping. This has been extremely valuable to the program. As an example, one of our sophomore students was inspired by many designs seen in last years competition. He went though designing in CAD and doing the math to verify the proper use of motors and gearing. His dedication to designing the robot in more of an industry approach was directly attributed becoming inspired by FIRST ideals. He brought his design and gave a presentation to the team. After some input from team members and mentors the general design and concept was accepted and building commenced.

How to inspire students will vary from team to team. From all mentor built to all student built and everything in-between. There is nothing wrong with any of them and there should never be animosity from one to the other.

The important thing is...

FIRST IS INSPIRATION!

Be inspired, show inspiration, and nurture inspiration. It is what FIRST is all about.

Thanks for your patience.