Current Districts Map. Who is next?

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

"Attend a competition" has to be somewhere in there. A school-sponsored team usually has a much easier time getting permission from the school for students to do that.



That's one opinion. Others might be "a failed team at least raises awareness that the program exists" or "a failed team provides a starting point for doing it again but better".

I assumed that was included in building the robot, I guess I could replace the word Build with Field but that's just nitpicking. The point is, if two teams are underperforming because they don't have the manpower and are burning their mentors out it's bad. If the teams are close together it might offset the increased logistical issues to merge them.


A failed team reinforces "STEM is too hard" that we're trying to fight.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

The point is, if two teams are underperforming because they don't have the manpower and are burning their mentors out it's bad. If the teams are close together it might offset the increased logistical issues to merge them.

Are you merely forgetting about the option for nearby teams to collaborate without actually merging, or did you consider and reject that possibility?

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

A failed team reinforces "STEM is too hard" that we're trying to fight.

You might be trying to fight the phrase "STEM is too hard", but I don't think I've ever heard anyone else give that as a motivation. To the contrary, FIRST is explicitly advertised as "the hardest fun you'll ever have."

I also don't think a team that "fails" is going to make people think that the problem is how difficult STEM is. I only have more than cursory knowledge of a few lapsed teams, but the overwhelming reasons for their "failure" as a team were a lack of funds or mentoring, not a lack of easy tasks.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

You might be trying to fight the phrase "STEM is too hard", but I don't think I've ever heard anyone else give that as a motivation. To the contrary, FIRST is explicitly advertised as "the hardest fun you'll ever have."

I also don't think a team that "fails" is going to make people think that the problem is how difficult STEM is. I only have more than cursory knowledge of a few lapsed teams, but the overwhelming reasons for their "failure" as a team were a lack of funds or mentoring, not a lack of easy tasks.

I don't think anyone would disagree that doing STEM in general or robotics specifically is difficult. The issue isn't with people realizing robotics is hard, it's with using the phrase "STEM is too hard (for me)" to never even try the program. One of the biggest benefits a FIRST team has for participants (in my humble opinion) is giving students with technical aptitude an impetus to grow interpersonal skills and giving students with high interpersonal aptitudes a better understanding of STEm fields and why they're important.

Now feel free to ignore this last part, but my first day of courses was today and my algorithms and data structures professor had a fantastic thought that I think is relevant here (I'm slightly paraphrasing). She said: "I used to be of the opinion that education could be fun and exciting. Now I realize that education is hard. Education isn't easy, but it can be engaging and rewarding." Replace education with STEM (or add it to the front) and I think this is highly relevant to robotics. One of the greatest things I learned from this program is that learning technical skills is almost always very difficult, but that that was not a reason not to try.

FIRST is about creating a world where scientists and engineers are as celebrated as athletes and pop stars-- part of this is helping the world realize that while yes, STEM is hard, it is not "too hard" to understand the applications and benefits.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

One of the greatest things I learned from this program is that learning technical skills is almost always very difficult, but that that was not a reason not to try.

As JFK said at Rice University, about 53 years ago, many great things are worth doing because they are hard. Why does Rice play Texas? Why did we choose to go to the moon?

[dodar]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

As JFK said at Rice University, about 53 years ago, many great things are worth doing because they are hard. Why does Rice play Texas? Why did we choose to go to the moon?

Well...Rice plays Texas because they get paid $3,000,000.(Well, nowadays they think they can actually win)

[Basel A]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

As JFK said at Rice University, about 53 years ago, many great things are worth doing because they are hard. Why does Rice play Texas? Why did we choose to go to the moon?

Most potential FIRST students (i.e. all students) weren't alive 53 years ago, haven't heard that speech, and have never been to the moon. The best way to convince them that joining a FIRST team will be good is not to discourage them, which is exactly what embracing "FIRST/STEM is hard" is doing. It's best to let them discover that it's fun before finding out that it's hard, so that, you know, they actually want to do it.

Virtually the same is true of the teachers tasked with starting and maintaining those teams with minimal resources. The best way to let a teacher know that an FRC team is hard is for them to know a previous team failed, or for them to have been involved in that failed team. "If it didn't work the first time, why will it work this time?" is what they're thinking.

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by Basel A

Most potential FIRST students (i.e. all students) weren't alive 53 years ago, haven't heard that speech, and have never been to the moon. The best way to convince them that joining a FIRST team will be good is not to discourage them, which is exactly what embracing "FIRST/STEM is hard" is doing. It's best to let them discover that it's fun before finding out that it's hard, so that, you know, they actually want to do it.

You don't need to have been alive 53 years ago to appreciate the goal of landing on the moon, nor to appreciate the bigger meaning behind it when people talk about landing on the moon. Indeed, the idea of a "moonshot" doesn't literally mean going to the moon- it now means so much more.

I highly recommend Google's Moonshot Thinking video, and reading Larry Page's interview with Wired on moonshots.

To the best engineers, scientists, and thinkers, something that is "hard" isn't something to avoid; it is something that begs for us to prove that we can do it. Don't tell people that a team folded because "STEM is hard." and it quit. Tell them that "STEM is hard" and that they can do better- that STEM is built on the very idea of trying something, failing, and trying something different.

[GeeTwo]

If I were to quote everyone I'm going to address, it would get too silly, so I'm just going to include by context.

I'm the oldest active mentor on 3946, and I won't be 53 until next month. Nonetheless, the message stands. Kennedy's message inspired the generation of engineers and technicians a generation before me, and their results inspired my generation. Manned space flight peaked in the early '70's, and since then, space boundaries have been pushed by autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles and devices. Satellites also look back down at earth and AUVs (autonomous undersea vehicles) probe the ocean volume. Robotics is how we learn more about the universe. Robotics is how we make more stuff at home less expensively. Robotics is eventually how we shall achieve the Hellenistic dream of a society in which people are for deeper thinking, planning, and imagination, and all of the routine is taken off our hands. So robotics matters. And yes, STEM is hard. But if you apply yourself to it, it's not too hard.

Sean and Jon are 100% correct about downsizing. I don't recall the source, but as I was entering the workforce (late '80s, early '90s), I recall reading "No company ever downsized its way to greatness." The same is even more true of a political or cultural movement - and let's remember that at its core, FIRST is a cultural movement. There may be individual cases where teams can and should merge, and FIRST is right to acknowledge and support it, but should never force it or even encourage it as a regular thing to do.

As much as organizational structure, the "hierarchy of needs" is wildly variant across FRC. 3946 seeks to change the local culture as a primary mission. Diversity, improving student career selection and marketability, and developing leadership are secondary. And while building a competitive robot is tertiary, we don't kid ourselves that it's the engine that pushes the ship. The mission isn't to kill the gators. The mission isn't to drain the swamp. The mission is to make this area that was once a swamp a seat of productivity, creativity, and development. And that will almost certainly involve killing a few gators and running some pumps.

Here in Louisiana, school-based teams are the norm, and essentially mandatory in order to attend competition, at least for public school students. High School students are allowed five non-school-field-trip absences per semester, or they fail every class that semester. Period. No excuses, exceptions, ifs, ands, or buts. As such, community FRC teams are like hen's teeth around here. Going to districts wouldn't change things - two Fridays cost just as much as Thursday and Friday of Bayou Regional in terms of field trip time, and more in terms of travel. Then, if you were to get a trip to DCMP, you'd fill up the budget of days, and if any of your students went to CMP on top of anything else, they'd fail the semester. How inspiring would that be?

Learning from failed teams - Slidell High School had a team (2182) which did very well in competition (ranked 3rd at Bayou in 2007, rookie year, and 5th in 2008). However, it starved for funding and did not compete after 2008. When we formed a new team in 2012 (not a single student or mentor in common with the old team), we made a point to get enough funding to continue past the first couple of years. When we qualified for CMP, we did a blitz to find more sponsors. We now have our own trailer, and list 9 platinum sponsors ($1000+ in a year), and a couple dozen gold and silver sponsors on our web site, and we're still pushing on a few more. And most important, we are changing the school and the community, creating bonds among the different segments of our student population, encouraging clean living, and promoting school spirit. Not bad for a team that has never ranked over 20th at a regional.

Finally, districts. Louisiana only has 42 teams listed on usfirst, and a few of those no longer exist (or at least compete). 37 of those teams are within 100 miles of a point midway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. So while districts would be great for those of us in southeast LA who can already day-trip to Bayou, it would probably just double travel costs for the others. A few years with a regional in the center or northern part of state (perhaps along the growing I-20 tech corridor) would be a good in-between step to get the rest of the state up to district density.