Qualifying For the 2005 Nationals

[Natchez]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

Sounds good Lucien but how do I explain to my school administration that our team is travelling so far and taking off school time just to watch.

Wayne, that's where the conference comes in for us; without the conference, it would be a hard sell. Our administration is already onboard with the idea that the students will be going to the conference and oh, by the way, they may be competing in a robotics competition. In our case, it "saves" the district $4,000 if our robot does not go along for the ride; that's a lot of FLL, EARLY, BEST, & Botball teams! Basically, our district has a robotics education budget that is spent on several different activities from 3rd through 12th grade. Time will only tell what affect this has on the students, teachers and engineers; hopefully, it will be years and years before I can report on what it is like to go to the Championships without a 'bot.

There is one MAJOR drawback with this plan though, we may become overzealous and put winning (which is our 3rd goal) ahead of teaching the students engineering & life skills (which is our 1st goal ... our 2nd goal is to expose our community to engineering). We are VERY cognizant that this may happen so we've been trying to think of ideas to combat it.