Organization and BEST Robotics

[Andrew Schuetze]

Originally Posted by LSevcik

snip

Both programs have something to offer for students who want to be part of a robotics program. It's up to the schools as to what works for them.

Thanks for chiming in Lucia and making the point that there are pros and cons to both programs and it comes down to the school as to what is the correct choice for them. In Edgewood ISD, the correct choice is to compete in both. It is a great fall activity from which I can recruit team members from. It is a bit of a problem though as I then have to deal with a bit of school spirit and competitiveness spilling over into our district FIRST team which is a multi-school team. The three campuses in the district each have a BEST team but we combine for a single district FIRST team.

Other choices for schools to consider, BotBall from NASA, why not do the underwater robot thing as the great group from Phoenix did and beat MIT

A long term goal for San Antonio, Texas is to develop the resources that Lucia and Lucien et al have done in Houston to create Houston robotics.org. They help teams in the BEST, FIRST, Botball plus FLL and even created a Lego challenge for elementary ages called EARLY.

The dollars have to be spread around much more widely but my sense is that an organization is likely to be more generous with the donations if it is going to a much larger and diverse group of students The pie gets bigger and there are more pieces to share....


APS