View Single Post
  Spotlight this post!  
Unread 14-04-2006, 11:08
Jay TenBrink Jay TenBrink is offline
Registered User
FRC #0494 (Martians)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Rookie Year: 2001
Location: Goodrich,MI
Posts: 111
Jay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond reputeJay TenBrink has a reputation beyond repute
Re: The Triplet Challenge

I’d like to explain why and how the Martian Twins happened this year.

History: Team 70 was a small veteran team operating out of Kettering University that was about to disband. Their mentor was retiring and there was nobody to take his place. Our team did not have mentor resources available to send there to keep the team going. We did, however, believe we could mentor two teams, 494 and 70, at the same location.

Mentoring: Our team leader and another mentor secured sponsorship for this second team. All the other mentor tasks that are mostly invisible to the students were done by shared mentor resources: registering for events, travel and accommodations, ordering team shirts, ordering raw materials and components, meeting with school administrators, book keeping, etc. All of these activities are essential, represent a lot of mentor time and energy, and can be done in bulk (for multiple teams) more efficiently. These aren't’t tasks generally associated with providing the inspiration or recognition to our students.

Membership: Students from surrounding high schools were invited to join. Currently we have students from two other area schools and expect to have more in the future.

The student experience:
All activities for brainstorming the game and robot are done as a combined group.
Building of mock-ups and “mules” to prove out concepts is done jointly.
Construction of the robots, programming, etc. is done jointly in our modest shop, which is the balcony above the gym that we share with the cheer leading team.
All students participate in fund raising.
Each team has a distinct pit crew and drive team. Scouting is a collaborative effort.

The bottom line is this: Mentor resources are limited and burn-out is a real danger in FIRST. Collaboration was essential to keep this second team in existence. There simply were not mentor resources available to sustain it on its own. Nobody was cheated out of their inspiration or handed a Pre-built robot or a complete design, it was all done together. This project was not undertaken as part of our plan for Martian domination of planet Earth, but to the best we could with what we had to work with. I sincerely believe this was and will continue to be good for FIRST.

Jay
Reply With Quote