FRC Class Curriculum Help

[nicholsjj]

Chriag- Sorry for the long post.

First off I want to say that I appreciate your spirit for wanting to help form a robotics class at your school in order to leave behind a better program than when you started. Our school recently switched from an electronics program to a robotics program two years ago, and we are currently looking to fully taking it to a pre-engineering course in the next two years so i have been looking into this quite a bit lately. First off, I suggest searching the forums as there is a lot of information here on chief of how other teams have went about doing this. Secondly, you will need to make sure the class is built on the standards that your state provides, http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/current.html here they are for reference. This is probably the most important part of the process and you should probably ask the most veteran or newest teachers at your school to help you out with this task. The major principal of it is that the class needs to be able to fulfill enough educational standards in order to get the school support. The nice part of this is at quick glance it looks like for MA you can fulfill over half the Science and Technology standards in one program. My advice to you is look through these standards and you ideas about what the program should look like and try to match up as many as possible. Examples can be wiring the electrical system of the robot can be used to explain the standards in electrical energy. Cadding the robot allows for the modeling standards to be met etc. Finally you will need administration support to pull it through. Try to get as many principals, superintendents, or school board members involved in your program as possible in order for them to see the enthusiasm and growth of the students in robotics. With their support it is much more easy to get a classroom class established. Also it is more easy to find funding with the higher ups on board. If you do these three things then you will be in good shape for having your goal of a robotics class come to light.