[Phil Ross]

Team 1712 was a little surprised at the recent announcement. We ended the school year having heard nothing about the intermediate program one way or the other. We ‘re obviously very glad the program is continuing with Vex for this year as we already made plans for the next year with our veterans and are looking to recruit a few new members to our Vex team. Our student drivers from this past year will be the coaches for the new members. We were able to recruit team members this past year with the Vex team that we would not have gotten had we only done FRC and we’re hoping to do the same this coming year. We also use Vex for TSA competitions and we have Vex workshops and in-house competition involving our autistic classes planned for the fall. The Vex system allows for challenging problem solving and with all of the Easy C, WPI, and Carnegie Mellon resources, it’s really friendly to use for students and helps us manage our own team.

When I asked our mentors/teachers about the new FIRST Tech Challenge and the fact that it might not be Vex after next year, they told us that our investment in the Vex system in the curriculum, on the team, and with all of the learning and resource gathering our students and teachers have done that we would not be changing from Vex in the foreseeable future regardless of what FIRST might decide. I would be sad to see it, but if we eventually would have to find another place to “play” in a Vex game outside of FIRST, then that’s what we’d probably do. It’s just too affordable, flexible, easy to use and learn from to do things differently – especially when we’re trying to get new kids involved who might be a little “afraid” of FRC at first. When you factor in that the Vex system is also a big part of our Tech Ed curriculum and is being used in our computer science/programming classes, there really is no way for us to change anyway. Our goal will always be to get kids excited and involved in engineering and technology through robotics competitions as well as get some kids ready to be part of FRC with 1712, but we just might be doing that at “another Vex competition” if the FIRST Tech Challenge stops using Vex someday.

Our mentors also told us that with all of the other Vex teams that are around the Philly area and at our district’s other high school and the fact that local league held scrimmages this past year, that it would just make sense to continue to develop that league concept with Vex in the future.