Poor Dean's Homework 2013 Turnout

[XaulZan11]

To go along with the themes of 'this is no reward or carrot for teams', Rockwell is offering $10,000 in grants for a 60 second video. Even with this a big potential reward and only a 60 second video, the deadline was extended due to a lack of entries.

I think the biggest issue is teams not knowing about these opportunities and most teams just don't meet during the summer/fall.

There is still a week to submit: http://www.rockwellautomation.com/ro...ur-future.page

[Libby K]

1923 did not get to finish ours by the deadline. We barely have students meeting consistently before Nov 1, let alone the time to dedicate to video production for it. (We're not going to submit something hastily thrown together; if it represents FIRST, it's got to be good.)

I think if this deadline was extended to later in the year (December), or even 'By the next Championship' - since that's when the next homework is given out, we could have made a pretty great submission.

Why?

Anything you capture for your team's media over the year could be usable here. However, where are most of your video/media resources going? Chairman's. If you film the stuff you put into Chairman's, then you can repurpose it for the homework video. Similar content, different end result.

This also could have been promoted better within the community, as well as by FIRST. One email against the hundreds that people can get per day, is going to be ignored -- they announced it on the social media pages for FIRST, but not everyone in the community follows those. Our own little CD community could have talked about it more.

But you know what we could do, since we're all so disappointed? Make a video anyway. Perhaps FIRST could extend the deadline. Maybe the submission folder will stay open.

Who cares if it's 'for the homework assignment' or not?! Use it as practice for your media students, before the kickoff. If you don't have any media students/mentors, see if teams around you do and can help you. You'll need it for Chairman's anyway later.

I think the best thing FIRST could do to drive submissions would be to extend the deadline, at least until Kickoff -- and the best thing the community could do is to keep reminding each other of the homework challenge, until all the teams we're friends with have submitted. It's not hard to make a two minute video; it's slightly harder to make a well-produced two minute video, but in very few cases is it actually going to be impossible for a team.

1923 will be putting ours out when it's done, regardless of whether the deadline is extended. It's about promoting FIRST to our community & beyond, not about getting a gold-star on Dean's Homework.

My honest response to seeing this thread:

"Wait there was homework?"

I pay attention to FIRST every day, and I don't remember hearing about this project at all. Maybe it's just me, but a bunch of people I've just asked didn't know about it either, and it would have been a fun and amazing opportunity to help spread FIRST. If it was only majorly discussed at championships, then the majority of teams aren't hearing about it, and the occasional chief delphi post about it doesn't really help get the information out there.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

My honest response to seeing this thread:

"Wait there was homework?"

I pay attention to FIRST every day, and I don't remember hearing about this project at all. Maybe it's just me, but a bunch of people I've just asked didn't know about it either, and it would have been a fun and amazing opportunity to help spread FIRST. If it was only majorly discussed at championships, then the majority of teams aren't hearing about it, and the occasional chief delphi post about it doesn't really help get the information out there.

You're a veteran. There's always homework. I think the assumption made by FIRST here is that teams will go and seek out Dean's Homework, and that's just plain not the case.

That gets me thinking...

My memory isn't perfect after 20 years of events, but wasn't Dean's Homework previously assigned during Kickoff and not the Championship? (Many years ago). If a team doesn't watch kickoff, then there's really something wrong.

Why not have the yearly homework put out in Dean's speech there, rather than at the CMP? That way everyone sees it.

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Libby K

You're a veteran. There's always homework. I think the assumption made by FIRST here is that teams will go and seek out Dean's Homework, and that's just plain not the case.

That gets me thinking...

My memory isn't perfect after 20 years of events, but wasn't Dean's Homework previously assigned during Kickoff and not the Championship? (Many years ago). If a team doesn't watch kickoff, then there's really something wrong.

Why not have the yearly homework put out in Dean's speech there, rather than at the CMP? That way everyone sees it.

It was previously assigned during Dean's kickoff speech, and IIRC during his Championship speech he would generally provide an update of some sorts during his CMP speech. I did notice that it was missing during this year's kickoff speech (and now that I think about it, I'm not too sure if I remember Dean even having a long speech during kickoff). Could it have been overlooked in the recent efforts to make kickoff shorter/more fast-paced?

2012 during kickoff he emphasized three things:Incorporate FIRST into everyday life, tracking Alumni, and nominating juniors for Dean's List (Source)

2011 was announced at Kickoff as being incorporating the word "FIRST" into everyday life (Source)

2010, was to reach out to inviting people outside of teams to FIRST events (Source, this page doesn't describe it much, but I personally remember an emphasis being put on inviting "outsiders" to FIRST events)

2009 and 2008 were pretty typical of Alumni network creation and spreading the word of FIRST via media.

2007 was trying to get legislative initiatives/writing to local politicians.

Special thanks goes out to Team 365 for being one of the top google results for "Deans homework 2011" and keeping consistent URL formats to allow a change of number to give me results

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Nobody was blaming FIRST.

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

I think somebody already mentioned that many teams don't meet regularly through the summer or even the fall. I think it's rather self-evident why it is impractical or unrealistic to expect those teams to make a video, so I'll focus on why my team (a team going into our eighth competitive season, having won a couple of Engineering Inspiration Awards and a RCA along the way) didn't do the homework.

We didn't do the homework.

That's the summary of "why we didn't"-- heck, we even have a student that loves to do videos that, had he heard about this, would have leapt at the opportunity. Sometimes there is no excuse-- and sometimes there isn't any real consequence either.

That being said, I would hazard a guess that many of the teams that fall into our "boat" of having the resources but not making a video certainly have made good usage of their time during the fall-- we've been busy mentoring the seven new FTC teams that we started this year, thank-you-very-much, in addition to doing our own recruitment and fundraising.

[Jscout11]

Like other teams, the Dean's List Homework was just something that kind of fell to the side and was (wrongly) forgotten among a list of offseason projects, which was admittedly long this year for us (5 offseason events, complete renovation of our build space, major fundraising and planning for increased travel expenses, summer and fall weekly teaching sessions, 3 new FLL teams, planning for NJ State FLL and our district event, etc.)

That being said, we have a lot of footage from over the past year that was used for our weekly Build blogs and chairman's effort (both of which have already begun for the next year) and we have started to put together the video, regardless of the due date, as many others are starting to do.

But I don't agree with those who say "It's just a two minute video, teams could have easily pulled something together quickly." It's not the most challenging project, but I still think that if a team wasn't really going to/wasn't able based on time and available students to put in enough effort to make a well thought out, meaningful video, there would be no point to it, at least in my opinion.

[ebarker]

I'm not making excuses but since the OP asked a question.....

The reason we didn't is simply because we are out of bandwidth. We meet about 4 days a week from CMP through Kickoff and our current projects are burying us. We have another 3 minute video project that is going to take 3 months to do, minimum, and we are 6 weeks behind. This project has a higher project status than the homework so that's how that happened.

For the general question about all teams, there are already lot of comments, but I'll add the Parato principal, or the 80/20 rule. It is unfortunate but probably 80 % of the teams in the world don't meet that often right now if at all and are probably not motivated enough or capable enough to do the video. Maybe they excel in some area. Maybe they are in the top 10 % of robot building, or top 10 % of something else.

This whole Parato thing frustrates everyone everywhere in what are know as socially unconstrainted situations, like any volunteer organization.. Trying to get the 80% of the crowd to do as well as the upper 20 % is tough. It's just like 20 % of the team members build 80 % of the robot, etc.

I can rant forever but I'll stop here....

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Libby K

My memory isn't perfect after 20 years of events, but wasn't Dean's Homework previously assigned during Kickoff and not the Championship? (Many years ago). If a team doesn't watch kickoff, then there's really something wrong.

Why not have the yearly homework put out in Dean's speech there, rather than at the CMP? That way everyone sees it.

Yes, I remember this and I honestly didn't know it was assigned at champs until this thread. Other then receiving email blasts about it I saw it nowhere else.

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

Nobody is blaming FIRST - teams just have other priorities. As a student, your homework should be a priority because it reflects on your grade (wow, if only I went by that in highschool...). In this case, teams like my own are busy trying to stay afloat. Dean's homework doesn't secure us funds for the next season. Its not a good way to look at it, I myself don't agree with it, but it is what it is. Don't get me wrong, I'm more then happy to use 'FIRST' in my every day life, spread the word, and inspire. We just don't have the students for a media team, or the support, the time, ect. Therefore it just doesn't happen because we're focused on other things.

[Chris is me]

For us, it was due six weeks after our team started meeting again, and we really only got more organized in the last 4 weeks or so. Training a new crew of students in the ways of cinematography and editing, filming, actually doing the editing, etc. was just not in the cards. We intend to do some kind of video in the fall as kind of a Chairman's training thing, but it obviously won't be done for Dean's Homework.

[Walter Deitzler]

Our team thought about doing the homework, but, in the end, there was just not enough time for us.

In the midst of training rookies, revamping the robot for CTTD, and trying to get new sponsors, we did not have time for the 10 of us to make a video. We honestly would have liked to do it, and thought about it, but never had enough free time to put together some filming, let alone editing (which can take just as long, if not longer, than the filming.)

We might make one anyway, who knows? We will have to see what our schedule form now until build looks like. Sure, we could not submit it, but it would be fun to make.

[MrBasse]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

I emphasized that part because I want to ask, when you teach you don't assign the homework clearly to less than 1/4 of the class at a major event and obscurely to the remainder who happen to be absent do you? We've never had the opportunity to go to St. Louis, but if we had we would have heard about this directly from the source. I looked back at email blasts and the homework assignment was mentioned three times (5/23, 10/4 as a side bar, and 10/17) and I can honestly tell you that at the times I got those emails, I never noticed them because it was the last thing on my mind. The only other place to find out about it was the FIRST website and there have been multiple threads about how easy it is to find things there...

I don't think anyone is making excuses, they are just giving their honest reasons for not getting it done. And never knowing about an assignment is a pretty great reason, not an excuse, for not doing it. We would like to give this a shot and see what we can come up with, but I'm not about to let my students do something with less than 100% effort just so they can get it done. So as was said earlier, we might still put something together, but it will be on our schedule and worked on until it is right.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

The difference between these posts and "the dog ate my homework" is that the latter is trying to avoid consequences. For ourselves at least, and I think most others, we're more than willing to own our decision. I can wish our priorities were different (like we didn't have to move for the 13th time), but I think the decision that led to us not finishing was correct for us in this case. We're trying to increase our bandwidth overall, which will hopefully change the outcome next time, but I don't regret it this time.

I'm happy to "blame" myself for it if you wish--I don't feel there's any fault in the rational decision to enrich and inspire in other ways more befitting of our circumstances. I saw this thread as the community endeavoring change the circumstances that led up to many teams' similar decisions.

[ChrisH]

Maybe most of us would rather build robots than make videos. While making videos is a lot easier than it used to be, it still requires a specific skill set to do well, and you can only be good at a limited number of things.

So if your team has a group of students that passionately wants to TELL the FIRST story, go for it. But don't get disappointed with teams that are busy BEING the FIRST story for not being storytellers too.