New School / New Opportunity: FIRST or VEX?

[DRow]

F Elliott,

Congratulations on your newly started program, and welcome to the robotics community! It’s great that you’re expanding the reach of STEM to these at-risk students, and that your new school has already been able to secure so many grants.

As for your question regarding competing in FIRST and/or VEX, there really is no wrong option. If you are able to secure the students, money, workspace and mentors needed to succeed in FLL --> FTC --> Potentially FRC, then FIRST could be a great possibility for your school. Depending on your situation, VEX IQ Challenge and VEX Robotics Competition could be a great option also.

The VEX IQ platform allows students from as early as second grade to get their feet wet with STEM. There is free curriculum offered on the VEX IQ website that spans an entire semester. This allows students to learn the basics of building a robot, while also learning other STEM applications such as friction or traction. Without even realizing it, students will begin to apply these lessons to their robots as they advance through the program, and (hopefully) make the jump to VEX EDR as they grow older.

VEX EDR works very closely with PLTW to provide positive and successful robotics programs in schools. In addition, VEX offers free curriculum that can be run at its own pace and customized to fit your student’s needs. As your school is just now beginning its robotics program, I would recommend taking a look at classroom starter kits for both VEX IQ and EDR. Each kit teaches a small group of students or an individual the basics of robot building, while the largest IQ and EDR bundles can outfit an entire classroom of 20+ students with multiple robots.

You may not know this, but VEX is based in Greenville, Texas. Less than an hour’s drive (depending on traffic) from Dallas. VEX offers in house pick-up for all orders, so you could eliminate waiting for parts to be shipped altogether if you so wanted. Also, there are more VEX teams located in Texas than in any other state in the US. Many of which are located in the Dallas Metroplex area. Here is an interactive map if you would be interested in finding events or other teams in your area for more information.

As I said before, both programs are great for getting students interested in STEM, and ultimately you should go with whatever option best suits your situation. If you happen to have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact VEX either by phone: 903-453-0802, email: sales@vexrobotics.com, or the official VEX Forum.

Cheers,
-Dillon

[gblake]

Lots of good advice here.

No one has emphasized the differences in the annual rhythms of the programs yet. Look into that when figuring out what is the best fit for your needs.

I like that each VRC (and I assume VEX IQ) season starts in April when the previous season ends (NZ and the rest of the Southern hemisphere is ready for a school year and they start setting the bar high immediately).

Other folks like that FTC starts in North America's Fall, about the time Northern hemisphere schools have already been in session for a little while.

Take a look at the RECF's RobotEvents web pages (google it), and the FIRST web pages (google it) to get a sense of the pacing of each organization's annual, world-wide, public activities/events.

Also, no one has yet discussed the difference in the tournaments' atmosphere. In FTC, I think there is *generally* more emphasis on each event having a similar level of stage-show eye candy (and I don't mean that in a bad way necessarily). In VRC, i think that there is *generally* a wider variety of tournament styles, with some being bargain-basement let's-help-the students-play-as-many-fun-matches-as-we-can, and others being more expensive and more heavily choreographed stage-shows along the lines of the FTC events.

Both styles I described above (and all the other VRC event styles you can find if you look around) have their pros and cons. Students almost always want lots of matches, and a goldilocks amount of interesting stage-show theater. Older participants often have a greater appreciation for some of the non-match ways to spend time at an event (but they can get bored too). For event producers, including the right amount of theater to get the crowd pumped up and have everyone excited for the matches is sometimes tricky.

Generally VRC/VIQ event producers have more flexibility to include local variations in their event than FRC/FTC/FLL event producers.

I disagree with any contention that any of the programs has a mentoring, or non-trivial vocational advantage over the others. Teams can choose to take both aspects of any of the programs as far as they like.

The FTC/VRC *require* less adult coaching/mentoring and vocational help, but they don't prevent, and don't fail to reward, investing just as much as you care to in both (Less risk than FRC, with nearly the same reward possible, just no 2'x3'x5' robots).

What is true is that an FRC team *typically* (but not always) needs a lot of both mentoring and vocational help in order to avoid lurching from one near failure to the next (on various time-scales, and robot production/operation scales). That is both good and bad. I don't say this to disparage FRC - A well run FRC team is a great experience for all. I say it to convey that creating a well-run an FRC team does require investing more of just about everything than some of the alternatives do.

Blake

[gblake]

Check out this other ongoing discussion
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=137539