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Unread 17-01-2009, 21:59
Cartwright Cartwright is offline
Scouting/Manufacturing
AKA: Jamie
FRC #0234 (Cyber Blue)
Team Role: Leadership
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: Indianapolis
Posts: 108
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Re: Expanding a Robotics team

Okay. Here's what Cyber Blue did last year. We had an Open House one day in the early fall. It was only for kids at the school who might like to join the team. To prepare for it, we put up flyers around the school and made a video to play on the video announcements.

If kids at the school simply aren't interested, here's a few ideas. Take two upperclassman from robotics and get permission from a teacher who teaches lowerclassmen to go into their class and talk to the kids for ten minutes about what the robotics team is. It'd probably be better to go to a higher academic class like an honors class or an early placement math class if you are trying to attract higher-level thinking students.

Another thing you might try is getting permission from your school to have a robotics pep session after this season is over. You could show everything your robot can do. You can get a top athlete and have him/her race against the robot. Then, have table at the entrance where students can sign up for the team (or have an "interested" list sign-up to contact the students later).

Another attempt at getting the robotics team noticed in the school would be to have the robot at lunch in the cafeteria where you could have a information table. Have one of your mentors there to answer questions (having a mentor will likely make it look like a serious operation).

If you're looking for freshman, go to the junior high school this spring and talk to middle school students. Maybe you could have a day camp where the high schoolers help the students build a small robot (You could invest in FLL material or VEX).

You might also try talking to a Physics teacher and seeing if the robotics team could take over the class to teach an engineering concept. Perhaps you could use your robot.