Quote:
Originally Posted by s_forbes
On the other side of things, having mentors build the whole robot without keeping the kids in the loop doesn't teach anything either. I doubt there are any teams that actually take this route, but obviously it doesn't do much inspiring if the kids don't get to play.
|
I've only been in FIRST for a grand total of 4 years (incl. this build season), but what I
have noticed is that most students that drive mentor-only built bots is that the students have no feel for the mechanical limitations of the bot. Therefore that type of team rarely does very well. Those kinds of teams do exist
*cough* one our rookie team neighbors at VCU *cough*, but you rarely hear about them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryVoshol
Time constraints often dictate that the best person must work on the robot to get it fixed, and we've only got 20 minutes before we have to be headed to the Queue. That doesn't mean the students never worked on the robot and only watched or held parts for 6-1/2 weeks. While there may be such a team around, I'd guess that even the most mentor-oriented teams don't fall into a 100%/0% built ratio.
|
A co-worker commented on a photo of our pits this year at VCU and the fact that there were 2 students and 3 mentors working on the bot...why weren't there more students? He didn't accept the explanation I gave him, which is exactly in line with what you've stated here.
I found a photo for him and quieted him though; during the build season on the Saturday right before ship date we have a photo of 9 pairs of hands working on the bot. It wasn't an intentional or posed photo...it just so happened that there were 9 different things that could be done in parallel at that given moment. 7 of the 9 people were students, and it wound up that one of the mentors was just holding something in place (hate to say this, but many mentors are also physically stronger than most students...).