[Lavapicker]

Originally Posted by Stud Man Dan

Its not For Inspiration and Recognition of Science Teaching, its For Inspiration and Recognition Science and Technology. I argue that learning, is a byproduct of inspiration, and that inspiration goes a long way. That inspiration is what gets student to learn, whether by watching, doing, researching or going on to institutions of higher education. You wonder why super teams are perennial super teams? Its because students come and go, but inspired mentors are there for the long hall.

I will even go so far as to say that FIRST isn't even just about the students, macroscopically speaking it has very little to do with them. The point is to inspire the culture, not just students, but adults, college mentors, and innocent bystanders. Students are only students for 4 years, if they are inspired, they want to be active and to learn, if they are active and they learn, change happens, if change happens FIRST has succeeded.

.

Wow, I hope that's not the sentiment of even a small percentage of the FIRST community. While mentors, sponsors and other adults definitely benefit, its all about the students! They are the future. It sounds like we need to redfine what the roles should be as I'm hearing a lot of things that disturb me. You can't justify mentors building the entire or even majority of the robot to me. A good mentor, ours, takes student input and helps THEM to make it happen. Case in point, one of our most talented students has been bugging me, the lead teacher and wannabe engineer, to make a ball knocker since day one. At the tournament he brought it up again and I told him we don't have the weight, the parts or time. Our engineer mentor listened to him and said "Ok, lets see how we make this happen." They identified and removed parts we were not using and experimented with different designs until they came up with a very effecient ball knocker. He guided him, as an experienced mentor does, to design, experiment and implement a system that helped us succeed. He didn't say great idea and then go to the side to build and mount it for him, as he easily could have done, and as a result that student will be a better engineer in the real world. We have too many students going into engineering that are book smart and tool/experience dumb. You don't learn these things by watching others do it! If mentors want to build the bots lets start a new competition they can compete in! Do you think students will learn as much by just watching that??? This is not a glorified pinewood derby - or it shouldn't be anyway. You're crazy if you think you are helping your students somehow by doing it all for them.