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Unread 04-12-2005, 19:49
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Emeritus Pain in the $@#$@#$@#
AKA: Christopher J. O'Connell
None #1097 (Site 3 Engineering)
Team Role: Alumni
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Latrobe (over the rainbow), CA
Posts: 217
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Re: Why do teams voluntarily do FIRST without adult technical mentors?

I must disagree with many of you. In manyt ways I think what makes some of the FIRST designs really great is that the students do not know enough to know the "right" way to do things. Instead of having been told what years of education can teach, we get to really experiment with things, sure, it may not be economical or efficient, but the time for that is later. Now, students get a chance to just get their hands a bit dirty. That is also why I am against identical designs which get used year after year. To me these are just the same as if a mentor did all of the designing. Even if the designs were originally students', after a couple of years the new stuents are robbed of the experience of seeing their own designs to reality.

In many ways FIRST is about re-inventing the wheel -- or at least re-making it.
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Team 1097 -- Site 3 Engineering
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2003 Sacramento Rookie All Star
2003 Silicon Valley Rookie All Star
2004 Sacramento Engineering Inspiration Award
2004 Sacramento Visualization Award
2004 Outstanding Volunteer Award (G. Glasser)
2004 Silicon Valley Sportsmanship Award
2004 National Visualization Runner Up
2004 Cal Games Finalist
2005 Sacramento Sportsmanship Award
2005 Sacramento #1 seed
2005 Sacramento Finalist

2005 Silicon Valley Sportsmanship Award
2005 Silicon Valley #1 Seed
2005 Silicon Valley Finalist