FIRST and PLTW

[Martinez]

"Engineering Design and Development - An engineering research course in which students work in teams to research, design and construct a solution to an open-ended engineering problem. Students apply principles developed in the four preceding courses. They must present progress reports, submit a final written report and defend their solutions to a panel of outside reviewers."

Ok, that was taken from RIT's website. Some of you may know I'm trying to create a team in the Owego Area. Last week, I was talking to a Owego Middle School teacher and he said "we have the full support of Project Lead the Way." At the time, I didn't really understand what he ment but while at FLR, I heard some talk that RIT was encouraging High Schools to use FIRST as a part of their 5th course.

I took the initial PLTW course back in High School so know what the program is. However, after searching the web I have found no direct links between FIRST and PLTW.

Are there any teams out there using FIRST as a part of PLTW?
Are new teams being created coming originally out of PLTW?
Am I just delusional and misunderstood what the teacher was talking about?

I have a meeting with some Lockheed Execs on Wednesday and was going to mention this. However, I don't want to go in there and just be duuuuuuh. Aside from the obvious talking to the teacher again, if anyone in the FIRST community knows anything about what I'm talking about could post here, it would be apreachated.

[kawelch]

We are in our second year of FIRST and next year our school will begin using PLTW. We feel it is perfect match. Time will tell.

[Katie Reynolds]

It would be wise to talk to Sean Schuff (found on ChiefDelphi as "Sean Schuff"). He piloted Tesla Engineering Charter School in the Appleton Area School District, using PLTW, after falling in love with FIRST.

[rees2001]

We began with PLTW in 1999 and soon after I started our FIRST team. I have taught all of the core PLTW courses and can see many links between the 2 programs. They both can obviously exist independently but together students get more opportunities to apply learning. Because of the 2 programs I now have many students working toward science, technology, and engineering careers. Our first batch of graduates are starting to enter the workforce and find great jobs.
I have had many students work on Robotics related projects in all classes and especially EDD. Some schools actually use EDD as a place to do the FIRST program.

[JAH]

At Perry Meridian we are in our third year of PLTW and so far have no official affiliation with FIRST but over half the PLTW kids are robotics kids and we use those classes for recruiting. So far the two seem to go hand in hand. I've taken/am taking 4 of the classes currently and have used skills in all of them for robotics. The only flaw I see in making FIRST one of the classes is that you would have to nearly require all team members to be in the class. In our current situation, that wouldn't work well. Not everyone on our team is going into engineering or even an engineering field. You may consider sending questions to our team leader, Scott Ritchie, because he is both the PLTW and FIRST coordinator.

[Danielle H]

Honestly, Greenfield has a good PLTW program, and we have a pretty well put together FIRST team of Greenfield and Morristown, but we don't really use FIRST Robotics as part of the PLTW program. It was mostly kids in Greenfield's PLTW that were interested as far as our half goes, so I could draw a connection there.

It would be kind of neat to make something in our PLTW program that partnered with FIRST Robotics. It'd be an excuse to work on the bot during school, and it would show students just how much work a bot takes to build. Like, people in my school who don't know what we do, think that we sit around and pick our noses every night after school during the build season. It would show them that it's a lot more than that. It forces you to go outside your comfort zone with your ability to do things, and you make a lot of friends out of it.

Amazing. I never really thought of teaming PLTW with FIRST... thanks for the idea, and I hope at least one thing I said helped you.

[Steve S.]

Hmm...never thought of that. We have the PLTW program at my school and we've had it for a while. I think im going to try and see what our school can do with this. I dont find it impossible by any means.

[Martinez]

Honestly, I had no intention of merging FIRST and PLTW. My goal is just to get a team in that school. The blame belongs with the teacher and I hope it goes well for others. There is still the possiblity that he doesn't understand FIRST is considered an afterschool activity or that I misunderstood him as simply saying we had the schools full support.*grin*

[dez250]

If you have any questions on PLTW, ask one of the Starting instructors, Mr. Paul Kane, Technology Teacher at Shenendehowa High School in Clifton Park, NY. It also happens Mr. Kane is the Faculty Adviser for FRC20 and also is the recent recipient of the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award at the 2006 UTC New England FRC Regional.

[hoag]

My school is extremely big with PLTW.

PLTW is in no way affiliated with our FIRST team.

However, our 3 advisors are PLTW teachers AND 95% of the team's students are in PLTW.

We use the skills and tools from PLTW to help us with the robot.

PLTW and FIRST have helped me decide what I want to do in life. I have enjoyed my experience with both and cannot thank my teachers enough for what they have done.