Dean's BAE Homework--political propaganda

[Petey]

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

This is a great thing; I just need to buckle down and write. But petey if you havn't mailed that yet, your wiki link is wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST

Crap.

Oh, well. As we've seen on /., plenty of politicians are familiar with Wiki and will probably know how to find it if they want to.

But the letter does look good. A very good model.

Thanks, sir...although I am a little disappointed Dean hasn't released some sort of blast about it that would actually inspire all students to do such a thing. Oh well. I bet all his time is taken up selecting his differentiated wardrobe...

--Petey

[MattK]

I think its almost impossible for every school in the country to have a FIRST team when even registration is $6k. There seems to be a major problem with this all... we are loosing companies that are potential FIRST Team sponsors- yet - FIRST is trying to gobble up as many High Schools as possible... the system is growing to fast, and will suffer the consequences at some point.

[Petey]

Agreed. The problem is not mentors, as Dean said. The problem is money.

FIRST needs to make it less expensive or convince the government or some giant corporation to subsidize programs.

But that won't happen as long as similarly expensive football, etc programs don't receive such funding beyond the local level.

--Petey

[Steve Howland]

I just sent mine - to those looking to contact your Sentors, here is a site that I found useful.
http://www.senate.com/stindex.html
It's a directory page - click on your state abbreviation and you will be given direct links to your senator's email adresses and websites. There is also an option to find the congressmen for your district but the site only allows you to contact your personal representative; not the whole state.

[Martinez]

I think this is a good idea. When President Bush spoke during the State of the Union about supporting programs that motivate young people into technology fields (yes I'm paraphrasing), I thought FIRST would be the perfect match. After my rookie year, I felt every school in the country should know what FIRST is and be involved at least in some way.

Sadly, my high school never had a FIRST team and may never get one. I learned about it in college and now am very glad I did. Every person here should be glad they have a Robotics team and can at least get involved at some level. Perhaps it is from my own experiences, but Dean's homework always touches me and have fallen for all the propaganda.

Yes, I could give up on FIRST. Yes, I could take the easy way out and join Chuck pernamently. However, these kids in Owego diserve a team of their own. Lockheed Martin Owego should not only know about it but be actively involved. Its what keeps me motivated, its what keeps me going.

So go out their and get new teams onboard! Go out their and get new sponsors! Talk to your congressmen and be part of the democratic process. Its ok to be active, its ok to be a lobbiest espeically if it is for the betterment of society!

/steps off his soapbox.
Sorry for the Rant. I just fell it should be said.

[KenWittlief]

I think a piece of important information is missing here.

We get government officials to attend events. Then what?

What exactly do we want state and federal government to DO to support FIRST?

We should have the best answer to this question. If we leave it up to them then who knows what their respose will be ?

[nuggetsyl]

Originally Posted by Petey

Agreed. The problem is not mentors, as Dean said. The problem is money.

FIRST needs to make it less expensive or convince the government or some giant corporation to subsidize programs.

But that won't happen as long as similarly expensive football, etc programs don't receive such funding beyond the local level.

--Petey

How much does you fooball team cost your school????? Yet they find money for that.

shaun

[sgeorge]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

How much does you fooball team cost your school????? Yet they find money for that.

shaun

Yes, they do find money for the sports teams and not for much else. That will not change. As long as we need to continue to beg from taxpayers and corporations for funding we continue to prove Dean wrong.
We don't have a shortage of mentors. We have a huge shortage of available funds.
We continue to see teams win regional events and not be able to afford to attend the championship. That is a lack of funds, not a lack of mentors.
FIRST is too expensive for the startup organization to sustain without a lot of outside money to help them along.

Just my 2 cents worth

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by sgeorge

Yes, they do find money for the sports teams and not for much else. That will not change.

I think you have to be more positive. I think that there should be more of a push for Schools to treat FIRST teams like varsity sports. A good way to gain some ground with schools is to try and start a robotics class so that the program is integrated into the curriculum.

[Nawaid Ladak]

You should have your letter handwritten and mailed off for like (whats the price of stamps again, they always seem to go up) $.37USD or $.39USD (w/e it is), that way, it is ALWAYS filtered by hand. and it has a better chance of getting on your congressman's desk. also, you can send a seprete copy to FIRST Place, or Dean's Personal Resedence. with a recipt from Kinko's or the UPS store for like $.10USD.

Im gona do my letter for my team before the Florida Regional, so we can hand it to the Governer himself when he is there on friday.

[Martinez]

The problem I see it is more of communication and publicity then necciarly funds. Yes, the Robotics program is extremely expensive however unlike a football team the money should not be coming from the educational system ie taxpayers but rather through corporations. The idea at least in my mind is to get local industries in technology to support the community through financial investment into a robotics program. Really your comparing apples to oranges.

However, how are we going to obtain the goal of one robotics team to every high school in America and then the world?

People need to know it exist.
The public needs to know the good its doing.
Corporations need to see its worth the investment.

One way to achive this is to talk to our politicians. Constantly they talk about supporting programs that keep kids off the streets, teach them strong moral values and educating them for high tech fields. FIRST does all three, a proven model that works.

Imagine what would happen if Govenour Pataki, Senator Clinton or even President Bush came out and said I support FIRST. This would serve to raise public awarness of the program which in of itself would spearhead new teams.

Close to know one in the Owego area knows about FIRST. I have had three meetings with upper management at Lockheed not just because I'm trying to get their approval but also to educate them as to what it is. They are not even aware of the 30+ Lockheed supported teams.

Really what we need to do is get the word out there. Writing a letter to your Congress Person is exactly that.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

How much does you fooball team cost your school????? Yet they find money for that.

shaun

yeah here in texas they find the money for football by cutting art/music/AP classes.

but I must agree with the above poster that the problem is not mentorship its sponsership . . pearce(1745) has been trying to form a team for the past 5 years, and it was only this year that some how we scavanged 6k before the deadline(see. miracle)

[Petey]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

How much does you fooball team cost your school????? Yet they find money for that.

shaun

Actually, our football plan is completely privately funded.

I should know. I played for it, and helped sell the Varsity Gold Cards that paid for it.

That said, football is an institution. Football is a sport that everyone knows and most everyone cares about to some degree. FIRST does not have that cachet. I go to William and Mary, a few hours away from Dave Lavery and VCU, and I've yet to meet anyone who's even heard of FIRST.

Dean is right when he says that football will not provide as many jobs for people as FIRST will. But he also misses the point--people don't do football because they want to be NFL players necessarily, but because it's fun as hell. But Dean hates sports. This is the man who said that walking was "an unfortunate remnant of the dark ages" while promoting the Segway.

Originally Posted by Stuart

yeah here in texas they find the money for football by cutting art/music/AP classes.

but I must agree with the above poster that the problem is not mentorship its sponsership . . pearce(1745) has been trying to form a team for the past 5 years, and it was only this year that some how we scavanged 6k before the deadline(see. miracle)

Look at "Friday Night Lights" for a good example of a football program that is over the top.

Football has been a school institution for over 100 years--we can't expect FIRST to show the same potential in a 10th of that.

Also, don't forget that football generates revenue through ticket sales, merch sales, and (in big programs), television sales. Does FIRST do that? Not unless you do a postseason regional...

Originally Posted by FreedomForce

You should have your letter handwritten and mailed off for like (whats the price of stamps again, they always seem to go up) $.37USD or $.39USD (w/e it is), that way, it is ALWAYS filtered by hand. and it has a better chance of getting on your congressman's desk. also, you can send a seprete copy to FIRST Place, or Dean's Personal Resedence. with a recipt from Kinko's or the UPS store for like $.10USD.

Im gona do my letter for my team before the Florida Regional, so we can hand it to the Governer himself when he is there on friday.

Great suggestion. I may well do that.

--Petey

[KenWittlief]

been thinking about this over dinner. Resist the urge to run to the government as if you were petitioning the king to solve your problems. If your government representitives dont know what FIRST is all about, then we are better off keeping their hands off until they do.

Lets look at this backwards. Next year we magically have a FIRST team at every HS in your state, or to make it easier to grasp, in your city.

Whats that going to be like?

Will FIRST be able to supply playfields and scoring systems and judges and head refs to every regional in the county, when every HS has a team?

Could IFI possibly have that many control systems built in a year?

Where will the regionals be held? a HS gym? at local collages? Universities? regional events at HS and state playoffs at Universities?

If every HS has a team, and the goal of FIRST is for students to work with engineers and scientists, then where are these 3 or 4 engineers per HS going to come from? What about cities that dont have any local engineering companys to supply mentors? An average size city/ suburbs/ surrounding rural area might have 30 HighSchools. That means you need about 120 engineers/ scientists / technology professionals each year, in each metropolitan area.

I think these are the major issues. Now what can the government do to address these things?

[KenWittlief]

Some thoughts:

Government contracts. The US government spends billions of dollars a year for defense contracts, research, NASA and JPL. What if the government required that, in order to win engineering contracts a company must support the FIRST program by supplying a certain percentage of mentors to FIRST-like programs. Same for universities that get government grants?

Centers and resources: If FIRST standarized on a playfield that could be used every year then we could have FIRST-centers in most cities. A place where HS teams could go to work on their designs, a centralized machine shop, practice field, computer equipment... This would be much easier than having every HS in the area put together its own robotics workshop and practice field every year. A FIRST-center in each city could also employ full time machinsts and mentors, maybe people who have retired from industry and want to do something important with some of their free time?

Transportation: getting students to the local worksite, getting teams to the local events, and even transporting the local champions to the state regionals and championship - these expenses could be funded by the school district, like they do for sports teams.