Community Service Hours

[JohnDapper]

Has anyone used the time they spent working on their robot as community serivce hours for college or scholarships? I've spent a lot of time helping build our robot during the last 2 years and i wanted to know if i could use it as community service hours.

[ZACH P.]

My school requires 30 hours of community service, so i get some of it from robotics. dont know if that helps you, you should be able to get it, especially if you're really involved in the chairman's award-type stuff.

[Pin Man]

I don't think for us working on the bot is considered community service

[narenr]

If you spend a semester's worth of hours (80 or so) working on the robot, you get one semester of class credit in robotics. Alternatively, you can get a few hours of community service, but maybe about 20 hours maximum.

[rbayer]

Could someone explain to me how working on your own robot is community service? Things that I would consider community service:

-Starting a new team
-Mentoring a team
-Coaching a Lego League team
-Teaching kids to read, etc


Basically, the stuff that Chairman's is looking for, not the stuff that helps you win a competition. If you're looking for some fun community service, get a group of friends together and found, coach, and mentor a Lego League team. It's a blast and you'll get more out of it than you can possibly imagine.

[FotoPlasma]

My high school accepts volunteer work at regionals as community service.

Last year, I had about 90 hours, because of that fact.

[AJ Quick]

I've never heard of a school requiring community service hours, what is all that about? If they required it at our school, I'm sure there would be many drop-outs.

[Greg]

Our school requires 40 community service hours to graduate. It really is not that hard to complete though

[ReggieB]

required volunteering is an oxymoron...


Anyway, my school requries 60, but most people can get that from going to school. Classes like band count for 10 hrs, as you have to do performances. Anyway, they can only record 999 hour (D'oh!), so now i'm keeping track of hours on my own.....


Working on the robot should not count. Working with the lego robot team your team works with should.
Working on the chairmains award entry should not count.
Working on the stuff that will give you chairmains should.

--ReggyB

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally posted by Greg
Our school requires 40 community service hours to graduate. It really is not that hard to complete though

Ours highly recommends 100 total community service hours to get into college.

Robotics volunteering at exhibitions, Lego League...would all qualify.

[melitami]

The high school where my team is (I'm an alumni) requires 144 hours of community service over your four years in order to graduate. I counted Lego League mentoring, working the FLL tournament in the area, and community demonstrations. Community service isn't that hard to find, and it's a lot of fun. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, kind of like FIRST.....

Well...we require 50 hours of community serivice at our school, but most people get more.

I think it's obvious we agree that help w/ lego league and actual chairmans award work would count. How about if you went to another team who was having problems and helped them for a day? would that count? It's not founding new teams or having your team do serious work (such as chairmans stuff)...but if just you went for an afternoon to help friends...

[J Flex 188]

While I agree that volunteer hours for robotics do count for the time.. in my opinion, it should only be if you are working for FIRST and the organisation itself, as opposed to working on your own team.

The point of volunteer hours in the TDSB (40 req) is to serve the community. Although robotics is an integral part of some communities, personally I do not see how it serves to benefit the community in any more significant way, other than giving kids a place to hang out for a while. 40 hours (one week of working 9 to 5) can be done, volunteering at a summer camp, helping in hospitals, working with kids, anything to better your community.

Again, im not trying to say that robotics shouldnt be used for community hours, but think about the point of those hours, and how many people you could be helping outside of those on your team.

[Ryan Albright]

my school requires 20 a year to pass to the next year

[sciencegeek3]

I wish we could get community service for working on our robotics team. we are required to do 8 hours of service per semester. 3 can be related to the school and the other 5 must be not related to school. however none of the 8 can be for a club/group you are involved in. with the entire school looking for hours it is hard to get them in a small comunity.