[fritzdejongh]

On our team (2009 Rookies, so new system only) we put as many kids as possible through what we dubbed "boot certification." To boot certify someone, we started with all the major components unplugged on the bot and the controls station (ie we didn't unhook every power wire, just things like the router and so on). Then the student has to
1) Step through each component in turn, explain what it does, and list everything it's connected to.
2) Hook everything up, power on the robot, start the dashboard, everything to be able to operate the robot. Be able to do wired and wireless. Know how to use the deployed program, or startup labview and run the "main", and even deploy a program.

It worked well for kids to watch others do this, and then try it themselves. We'd prompt them if they got stuck, we didn't try to make it a chore... Of course the ones who put it together were already familiar with the system.

This provided a good starting point to teach labview. The kids not on the programming team at least knew how the system worked and could start it up.