School Board Meeting

[coastertux]

Thanks for all the awesome advice!

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

...and if you want a local representative from FIRST to join in the fun, all you need to do is invite him (schedule permitting).

Mr. Kressly, I will let the advisors know.

[rourke]

Send me an e-mail to steve.rourke@gm.com. When I get to work on Monday, I'll return your message with a copy of the PowerPoint presentation we made last October to the District School Board of Niagara. It has everything from soup to nuts in it, and we were able to scoop $24,000 annually from the board's budget for future growth of FIRST in the region. Make sure you bring lots of people with you to show support -- we had over 100 students and parents attend. We also had the students make the presentation, and they also drove the robot around the astounded trustees. Showing lots of shiny medals, trophies, and banners plays out well with administrators. End by showing them a video of the competiton. If you don't have a good quality video, here's a link to one from the GTR last year that we used (produced by a student on Team 1114 Simbotics): http://niagarafirst.org (then follow the video link on the top left corner of the page -- it's a big file, so be patient)

-Steve

[Dermot_135]

Describe to them the knowledge and experience that you've gained from FIRST and how it has impacted your lives. Show them some footage from the competitions and don't forget to emphasize the importance of science and technology involved with building the robots. Also tell them how your team members are doing things that most of your classmates would never dream of doing. Oh, and tell them how positively FIRST affects the school's reputation, they seem to like that kind of stuff.

[irishninja]

Since it is education remember to talk about how FIRST teams incorporate all your knowledge, and bring together all the theoretical knowledge you learn in a classroom, to a real life application- physics, precal, algebra, PR, teamwork, English, (hey someone has to write those awards), organization, and problem solving.

[Tim Arnold]

I don't have anything to say that hasn't been already, but 1523 recently did a presentation for our SAC committee. We only had about five minutes and showed the Inventor model of our robot, a 1/3 scale version that drives around and shoots similarly to the real one, and played a video that we produced just for that meeting to help get funding.

We went in asking for $1000 (we needed $2500 for busses to nationals) and said that we need whatever they can give... we went out with $1500 .

Here is the video we played: http://marsbot.org/node/276

Good luck,
Tim

[YonZ]

Impacts Impacts Impacts, How does FIRST impact your learning, your schoolwork, your helping out in the community?

Schools like to see that you get their name out. Do you have any media articles or tv clips that you can show them that the school is being recognized because of your team?

I'd say run the robot for about 3 minutes in the middle of the chunk of time. People really want to see the bot run so they're in anticipation, have it be the climax after you tell about the team and what you do.

They want to know what the money will be used for, tell them that. Also, show the big figures it takes to run a FIRST team, that illustrates better than anything else why two to five thousand is nice, but doesn't quite cut it.

Thank them for their time and for giving you the opportunity to present to them.

There are a lot of great ideas in this thread; I would try to take advantage of all of them (if you had more time). In any case, I am on my districts school board, so I thought I could try to give a little insight.

Greg Marra and Tom Bottiglieri summed it up most succinctly;
Impact and Educational value.

In a more roundabout way of saying that, here are my suggestions.
The school board likes seeing awards as much as the next group of folks, but what they really want to hear is that something they have at their school is making a positive impact on students and has not only educational value, but is also enjoyable.
Having said that, visuals are always nice, but try not to get too "busy". A robot and posters and a PowerPoint, etc... can be a lot to take in for 15 minutes. Having the robot there is, for me, a definite must though. It is one of the most visible, unique products of your team. Other teams have poster boards. Other teams do not have a robot.
Give them only enough background about the game as needed. Rather, tending back to the impact and educational value theme, spend your time with how the experience has caused growth. How has your school district sponsoring a FIRST team helped you? Enthusiasm counts.

Lastly, invite them to see an off-season competition with your team, a Regional event, or the Championships. There is more to FIRST than anyone can express in words. My coach once told me that "The hard part is getting them in the door. After that, it [the attraction of FIRST] works by itself." I am a firm believer in that. Get them involved as fans of your team; the experience is something I wouldn't trade for the world--it will have an impact on them as well. Remember to thank them for their time, and that if the point of your presentation is to garner monetary support, remember to impress that as a last point. No use in having the message get washed out by the rest of the presentation.

I lied about the lastly part. Lastly, lastly (really now).
Mr. Kressly is an amazing FIRST Senior Mentor, and his support has been invaluable to my team. Take advantage of his advice.
Hope this helps!

-Mike