Way to get kids to join a team

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by a breezy era

I wish you the best of luck. One suggestion I have is to reach out to local FIRST teams to help mentor and attract students. An example of this: our team recently did a presentation for a nearby school that has interest in starting a team. I think it had a very very positive effect and hopefully we'll have a strong relationship with them next year. Use the resources other teams have to mentor your rookie team: if you reach out and ask, I'm sure there are at least a few teams in the area who would be willing to host a demo or team party for wouldbes of your new team. Once again, good luck.

Sorry guys, I don't know how to stick to qoutes in one post.

114 has said they will be more than willing to let anyone from my team come over and participate in the workshops that they run. They let me take the robot to my school which was really cool.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

Very very cool. Have you started any kind of name list yet? That would probably help

Also remember that you'll get new students at the school next year and they'll be looking for activities to get involved in, and Robotics is a very "make friends fast" activity. So keep them in mind too ^^

[Aignam]

Oh, let 'em drive the robot. That's by far the best way to get kids interested. Set up a table during lunch or clubfest or whatever you find most suitible with a display including pictures, video, handouts, a person to answer questions, and a signup sheet. Not too far away, set up a station to allow the kids to drive the robot (monitored by an experienced member with a kill switch). Pick your most crowd-pleasing robot, and have a playing object or two to mess around with. Soon enough, you'll have a crowd of people around you, tons of kids screaming in your ear to drive the robot, several new members, and a headache.

[Michael Corsetto]

My school is actualy 6-12 grades wich makes it perfect for starting an FLL team once we get a bit of experience. The reason not to many people got involved after I brought in the robot that it wasn't very organized. Really, I just brought in the robot and that was it. No announcements or anything. The first meeting was after school so that didn't help either. Because of this bad planning I will definintly have another robot demo at the beginning of the next school year. At least I have 4 core guys with which I can start a team. Keep the help coming.

[Elyse Holguin]

Originally Posted by Aignam

Oh, let 'em drive the robot. That's by far the best way to get kids interested.

This works amazingly, from our experience. We start the interest in robotics early by having team members mentor lego league. Later on we have the annual "kids night" and open house right before ship date, where our families, sponsors, and a ton of kids can come in and view the robot and ask any questions they might have about the program. We also take the robot to parades and back to school nights at our four high schools in order to promote the program at the high school level. However, the majority of our students came to the program by hearing about it from students already on the team, so talk talk talk about robotics all the time, and how awesome it is (the preseason, build season, and esp. competition!), and you're bound to get a couple people interested enough to join the team.

We just drive it around the halls at school. Right after the last bell. It creates a lot of attention. Especially when we crash into things! And when we start fighting over the joysticks. And when we topple garbage cans... And when we push this year's goal around with the drivers in it.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

I go to a 7-12 school, and our pilot program for last year's Chairman's award at Midwest Regional was SECOND (Science and Engineering Can Open New Doors) and we basically ended up introducing juniorhigh kids to that. They really enjoyed it a lot it seems, because they have shown a lot of interest in coming back. It is much more robotics oriented than regular FLL, so that maybe something to consider. Give younger kids a build season, and see wht they can do. You'd be suprised.

[suneel112]

Do a junior high robot demonstration. (if applicable), get out your 2001 robot, put on some hip-hop music (if that is popular in the school, otherwise rock or [eek] boy bands), and start balancing and picking up balls. Also get the big ball (alright, you can use this year's for it also), pick it up, extend the arm, and drop it on the really extremely irrating vexing annoying person in junior high. Grade 6 is too young to submit to that "torture". The next year, we had approximately 20 new high school members.

[Lisa Perez]

We've done roadshows for entire schools at the end of the FIRST season. In addition to showing the robot off, we do a set of science tricks, which usually gets the younger ones enchanted. Then we select both a group of teachers and a group of students to drive and perform a task with the robot (usually the students perform better =)).

[Joe J.]

P-CEP has a Club Night were all the 8th graders from the 5 middle schools come to the Park and can walk around and sign up for whatever clubs and/or teams the want to join next year. This year we were going to drive our 2002 robot Ziff around but due to some problem it wasn't working but just having it sitting there not moving drew one of the largest crowds I saw that night.

Now after we got Ziff fixed we have been once again rideing around in the hallways at lunch no less so that gets attention from both students and teachers. Those rotating lights really get people's attention.

[Mike Heinowski]

I'm still suprised that we get away with riding Ziff 1.0 around.

[Astronouth7303]

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