Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Matt Adams
Copying a design over and over is not inspirational.
|
There are multiple views on this subject, simply because there are multiple way of doing things around the country, and different situation at each school. I for one can only speak from the west coast experience.
For us, we do not get many mechanical engineers in the California teams. If it is up to the high school teachers and students to design the drive train, most of them would not have been close to the quality of other teams without professional engineer's help. By releasing their design, the Technokats, and Andy Baker specifically, inspired a lot of west coast students/teams more about engineering and designing than they could've on their own. It is true they are copying a design. But just building the copied design is such a great experience for those teams already.
I do agree that some people just choose to take the easy way out and copy others design. But I have a feeling that shared designs aren't lowering team's motivation to create new designs. Again, things are differet at each place. Some teams could have problem with getting professional help. Some others might have problem because their students cannot engage in their team year round. What I believe is happening is, teams who are motivated to create their own design, or new improvements on top of the shared designs are doing them anyway. Teams who don't, well, they just don't have the resources or they don't want to anyway. It is a matter of how the team works. A single white paper doesn't change that.
I am afraid this goes back to the issue about inspiration in FIRST. What exactly is the best way to inspire kids? Is it limited to 1 method and 1 method only? What is right and what is wrong? My gut feeling tells me we should let teams do what works for them. You can give them friendly constructive advices, build a support group and show the teams different ways of doing things, but in the end, the teams have to behave according to their environment and their resources.
I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in the Bay area of Northern California, WRRF create workshops so students and teams can learn what they need to know to start designing a robot. We also create a network so teams around the area can ask for help from each other, and share ideas and designs if they want to. There are trade secrets, or "competitive edge" from time to time, but after a year's competition, the teams are more than willing to share their design and their experience with other teams. All in all, it has worked well for us. There are teams who are competitive, but there are more teams who are in just for the experience of inspiration and learning.
So, try to give advice when you see teams aren't challenging themselves enough even though they got the resources, talk to them and see what they think. I learned that a lot of those teams are ready to move up to the next step and create a bigger and more experienced robotics program, but just need the right key and the right time to get started. I would go as far as to say showing teams the network of teams out there is as important as giving them a specific design. There is a chinese saying: "Give a man a fish, and he will have a meal. Teach the man to fish, and he will know how to feed himself."
-Ken L