Question of the Week!!! (9/12/04)

[Aignam]

In my experience, there's nothing more effective or more entertaining than just demo-ing the robot, maybe giving some Freshman a go at driving one day under controlled conditions, and just showing off the absolute best your team has. Your team pretty much sells itself for you---the interested people get to see how much fun your team is having and then get to have a taste of it for themselves. What could be better?

[lilszek24]

We basically put up a bulliten board and flyers all over school as well as have already members spreading the word. Then new kids have to fill out an application which consists of you basic information and a one page essay of why you want to be on the team and what u think u wud bring to the team. and sumtimes if it gets down to the wire the teachers will do interviews. and then we start the season.
Not to mention you have to reapply if its only your second year on the team.

The whole process helps us get kids who are really interested and want to put the time in rather than they want to be able to put it on there transcript

[Joe Matt]

We promote where we know we will get people, we get technology teachers to get their kids to come. Plus it helps to have the head to technology education as the head of our team.

[Elgin Clock]

Remember back in the day when the biggest ruse you used to "trick" kids to join the team was that there was a (not quite) free trip to Disney at the end of the season..

Yeah.. Oh well...

Now it's mostly friends of current members, siblings of current members/alumni, or just people join cause they heard about us through the grapevine.
Team 237's HS only has about 300 students in it, and our team usually has about 25-30 students on it every year.

[Koko Ed]

The X-Catss have the two teachers on the team take thier 9th and 10th grade classes down to the auditorium and show them a movie from last season and open up the application process to them (we occasionally take 11th graders but never seniors). After they put in their application they are interviewed by the teahers and Xerox mentors to see if they qualify to be an X-Cat.
Adult mentors are usually asked to join by other mentors involved on the team and they apply to be on the team(we had 37 mentors last season and only 34 kids. We're not going to have that many this year). Now that Xerox has three teams (191 the X-Cats, 1126 Webster Sparx and 1450 GMAces-name likely to change. People will think GM is sponsoring them plus they're opening up the team to the rest of the school thus the GM should go anyways. I personally think they should go with the Q-Dogs, Franklin's back-up nickname to the Quakers) the mentors can choose which of the three teams they want to join( if there is an opening).

[Wayne C.]

Clubfest is Tuesday-

all the clubs and teams in the school have an expo after school. We demo robots and show videos on the team and take signups of course.

Each year we pick up 50-100 names of which a certain percentage end up sticking with the team.

We have some special movies for this year. It should be quite a time.

WC

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Don't forget FLL. After mentoring FLL for many years, my first 5th graders are now freshman.
There are so many FLL teams in town (10+) that when they get to high school, they are already interested and know basic mechanics.

[Jaine Perotti]

In addition to what I said earlier ---

I am also somewhat worried about recruiting too well and making the team grow too large. We have a small team, which makes the whole experience much more personal and relaxed. We are much like a big family. I don't want this to change.

To solve this problem, we could limit the size by making students apply to be on the team and then select who we want. I know a lot of teams do this.

However I would be concerned about doing this because it would make being on the team more competitive and less relaxed, and might eliminate some of the students (in my opinion) who could benefit the most from robotics but might not necissarily be the most appealing on an application form. These students would include those who really haven't found a direction for their lives yet, get in trouble because they have no outlet for their talents and have not found a way to make a contribution to society, or who aren't at the top of the class.

I know that robotics has "saved", so to speak, many kids who would just be sitting in front of the tv all day and not doing anything. It has been life changing to those who have needed to learn how to be gracious and professional. I would like the robotics team to continue to affect people's lives in this way, but how do you include "everyone" in the robotics experience without losing the benifits of having a small team?

If we had an application for the team, what sort of questions would we ask to determine who would truly benefit from the experience the most, and giving the kids who are less than stellar a chance to change their lives? How would we distiguish between the kids who would truly be non-beneficial to the team and the kids who would grow into the team? If you have one, what sort of questions does your team put on an application and what does your team look for in a student?

[Kyle Love]

45 has a call out meeting at the high school. Then, we take some of em' to FSR. We also hold some shop time so that they can learn to use the machines. We just need to know how to recruit more girls.

We also have some team building activities. Like paintball, bowling or go-karting. It's great fun!

-Kyle

[dubious elise]

We hold a Monday meeting after school every week and have announcements for the first few weeks of school over the PA system to recruit kids that aren't in a tech-ed class. The kids in tech-ed classes like electronics and tech drafting get applications and "sales pitches" (if you will) from the teachers, who also run the robotics team.

Students themselves also promote the team by seeking out interested students, especially in their science and math classes. Compliments of Ricky Q. and at least 4 other team members in my first semester physics class last year, i was able to join team 269.

Great timing on their part and mine since we have handed out nearly 100 applications this year alone to fill just 15 open spots on the designated "team" (though we always encourage interested students to assist in fundraising, attend meetings, and come to learning sessions for driving, designing, and 3D modeling since every little bit helps!)