[EricH]

Originally Posted by dradel

Isn't it more important to teach them how to think!!?? Winning is nice, but it shouldn't be the end all be all. Putting forth true effort, and learning something is way more important than bragging rights.

What is FIRST's mission?

Inspiration.

To me, the Ri3D type of robots are a good thing and maybe not so good of a thing. They're a good thing because they raise the floor, allowing teams to see a successful design or six in action, then copy it (and if you just copy it, you're missing out--the subtle improvements are where it's at, folks!). They allow more teams to actually be competitive at regionals, never a bad thing--anybody else remember the older days, when if you got one BLT on your alliance, your only hope was that they could play some really good defense?

That said, the not-so-good part is that some teams will just copy the designs. Anybody who's seen me answer "obvious" rules and/or design questions knows that I'm not going to give a straight answer right away, I'm going to go the long way around (often involving math) and try to teach something along the way. I'm a big fan of not giving the answer, and a big fan of teaching how to think--and NOT a big fan of having everybody just say "Do my homework for me."

So, I opt to be somewhat neutral, because of what I just outlined. I can see both sides as having valid points.