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on our team, 461 we have incredible student participation in the entire process during the build season. this is my first year on team 461 as a Purdue college engineering advisor and the kids are phenomenol. they are totally involved in everything. we start off the build season in small groups where everyone comes up w. ideas and contribute to the team.
after the general design is chosen, the students totally step up in the design process. this year we used Autodesk Inventor, in the kit, and modeled the entire robot on it. the kids did a lot of modeling in Inventor and designing in inventor. even though there was a lot of questions and asking and discussing of items, thats wat the entire learning process is all about! it was awesome working w. such enthusiastic kids who wanted to design parts and concepts w. ur aid, instead of u doing it and being like this is how it is done. sure kids had questions but it was more like a college advisor sits in the chair next to them and discusses and shows them and guides them. sure as college advisors we did do CAD work, but i would still say our students had an incredible amount of participation in the design process.
after the bot was designed in Inventor the kids and advisors made drawings for all the parts and fabrication began. even during this part of the process the students had HUGE involvment. they spend a lot of time working on fabrication and assembly of the bot. i think many of them found it gratifying to be fabricating the parts and concepts that they had such huge involvement in designing. even w. complex parts, like every robot has, we team up 1 college advisor w. 1 or 2 high school students and set out on the path to make the part(s) and assembly. and that, in my oppinion, is one of the greatest things to be involved in as a college student mentor. working w. them is the best part of my job as a college mentor. they make it fun, exciting, and an awesome experience. not only do i help them learn and show them new things but they show me new things and help me learn.
all in all, the students on this team are totoally awesome and they work incredibly hard. they put in their time and efforts and they benefit from it all. u get out as much as you put in and I can honestly say that each and everyone of our students as well as college advisors have put in a lot of time and effort and we all learn, grow, and work as a team.
sorry about the length.........
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