Training for the upcoming underclassmen?

[scifix]

This year, we have recruited a few upcoming underclassmen to join the team. However, we suspect that some of them do not even know what the difference between a hex nut or a lock nut! Naturally, their knowledge is very limited, but they are willing to dedicate the time to learn.

How do you guys train new members? Are there any books that can illustrate diagrams of basic tools and hardware as well as explain basic engineering concepts? We want them to at least have a basic knowledge before the star of next school year.

We would like them to:

- Identify tools in the shop (allen wrenches, power tools etc.)
- Identify common hardware and sizes (nuts, bolts, washers, machine screws, etc)
- Become familiar of electrical terms / systems (circuit breakers, power distribution)
- Understand basic programming concepts
- Materials
- Understanding of Motors (rpms, torque)

The major concern is that these underclassmen will be taking over once the upperclassmen graduates. So we do not want to overwhelm them with robotics training in the school year while dealing with the difficulties of freshmen year.

Any links, book titles, or diagrams would be appreciated!!

[Cuog]

start them off with a freshmen project, give them something to do and guide them through it, they will hate you if u tell them to stuy diagrams and OMFG read a book but some practical experience will get them into it.

[pyroslev]

I might reccomend the tips manual that FIRST has. It's a simple thing to break the surface. Familiarizes them with the basic parts you have from the kit and some tips. It also teaches them to read and understand the FIRST manuals (that way their brains don't explode when the game books are up.)

[Simon Strauss]

This year we unfortunately had no successful projects for training the 60 some odd freshmen who came to our first few meetings with interest and thus were left with only one actualy comming halfway through build. However, My freshmen year the team captain had the other motivated freshmen and myself observe and take part in the scraping of a previous years robot. I know it may sound like a horribly disrespectful move to some of you but it was very helpful in orienting us with tools, parts and where things went in the shop without the overwhelming aspect of being told to build something when you have no previous knowledge. It also allowed the returning members to reorient themselves through teaching us as well as functioning as a bonding type experience in that work was being done but because it hardly mattered and there was no deadline everyone was on their best humor and no one turned into a jerk while trying to take the lead.
Next season we plan on taking a similar approach but instead towards repairing the scraped 2005 robot and some side concept projects with extra emphasis on the time and effort requirements that being a member initials in the first few meetings. We hope that through this we can sift out those students who want to join for credit and thus properly train those that actually want to have fun building robots.

[scifix]

Haha...yea we were thinking of projects. We're still looking for book titles. Like Engineering Basics and such.

[Jack Jones]

Best advice I can give is to encourage them to get their parents involved. That takes training, right?

Parental involvement will help them deal with the difficulties of their freshmen year by keeping them focused on the task at hand. They can tunnel their wisdom through their kids, thereby teaching them how to become upperclassmen at an accelerated pace. They can be there to keep an eye on them, just to make sure they do the job right, and that they behave - or else. Besides, the freshmen won't need to be bumming rides that way.

[anna~marie]

I learned my first year by just watching and tearing apart old things... come to think of it I still have a broken spike in my purse from this year guess I never stopped learning!

[Dan Larochelle]

Trinity high school and intelitek (team #40) used Vex this year to train both upper and underclassmen. For our Aim High brainstorming, we made 6 miniFRC robots (1/3 scale) for this years's game and competed them against each other. We documented our experience in a video you can download at www.intelitekdownloads.com/MiniFRC.

We will be presenting what we learned from this experience to the FIRST community in the "Using Vex to Supercharge your FRC Team" conference at the Championship. We used a beta version of inteliek's new REC curriculum to train the students in robotics before this year's kickoff. The curriculum assumes the student has no prior knowledge of robotics and each activity builds on the previously learned materials. The students used the curriculum to become familiar with the Vex hardware and the easyC software prior to the 2006 kickoff.

The MiniFRC project was a great success for our team. It really got the underclassmen more involved. The lessons we learned in the MiniFRC project directly affected our big FRC robot's design. When we started building the big robot, the underclassmen kept iterating the MiniFRC designs and competing them against each other to further increase their knowledge. This was the most productive year for my underclassmen in the 13 years I have been a mentor. I think I learned just as much as they did.

[Danielle H]

On our team, I was new to manufacturing in general, let alone having never been in Robotics before. What's worse? Our team seemed pretty much set in what they wanted to do and had no time to teach.

I sat back and observed for awhile and it helped SO MUCH. Then I asked some of our engineers for odd jobs, which they gladly gave. Before I knew it, I was helping assemble our pneumatics system.

Just some advice for the upperclassmen: LET THE UNDERCLASSMEN/NEWBIES OBSERVE YOU AND TRY NOT TO GET FRUSTRATED EASILY WITH THEM. REMEMBER, YOU WERE NEW ONCE TOO.

Advice for underclassmen: WHEN OBSERVING, TRY NOT TO GET IN THE WAY. IT'S GOING TO BE HARD FOR THE UPPERCLASSMEN NOT TO GET ANGRY IF YOU'RE ALWAYS IN THE WAY. Also, don't be afraid to ask for help, just be sure to go to someone who isn't really REALLY busy.

Hope that helped.

Simply,
Danielle
393

[Not2B]

Getting the students to work on an old robot is good. Maybe a summer project...

What we do, and it's been good and popular, it not to train them on tools or motors or such, but teach them and prep them for FIRST.

- I run a FIRST-esque game that has them build ping pong balls shooters with a kit of parts (all office supplies).

- Then we do a communications game where they have to built a "thing" out of tooth picks and mini marshmellows - and only one person can see the thing they are building, and that one person can not touch anything.

- We do a drinking straw and tape tower to learn about structures

- We do a robo-code game to get the freshmen thinking about auto modes. Learn more at http://robocode.sourceforge.net/?Ope...-prod-robocode - a student runs a competition all season long

- Thinking about adding in a mouse trap powered car contest to go over torque, force, and friction

- We do a post season wire-controlled sumobot contest - just for fun. OK... it's sumo-esque. It's like battle bots, we destroy each other - good to get out pent up agression in a fun, safe way. We allow newbies to join, and help them build robots.

- Reprogram old robots - let the freshmen give it a try.

If you want details on the ping pong, tower, communications game, robocode, sumo, or anything else - let me know. I'm trying to get these out for everyone, but if you need it soon, I can get you a un-edited copy.

[Donut]

Here's a question for all you teams that have been doing some kind of underclassmen training, if you are doing a mock game or fun robots or repairing robots, how do you get the time to do this in the fall? Are you a class (so you actually have in school time to do this), or do you make after school time?

Our team has always attempted to do some kind of teaching thing in the fall with miserable failures every single year, mainly due to a lack of time since it is hard to get teachers to spend that much time in the fall when they know they'll be spending so much in the spring (we are a club, not a team or class), and because at least 1/2 the club is typically in marching band, killing alot of the available after school time.

[dk5sm5luigi]

WPI runs a game called Savage Soccer in the fall where all FIRST teams can participate. It is a game developed by WPI students in a format similar to FIRST. We give everyone four weeks to build their VEX robot and then you have to compete. This past year we had over 30 teams and hopefully we will have more this year. The best part is that it is free if you already have a VEX kit. For more information go to http://www.wpi.edu/~savage/

If you are too far away from MA to go we are looking into creating "regionals" where you use our game and all you have to do is get teams and build the field. There is also more information about that on the Savage Soccer website.

[Carol]

MOE has a fall program called MOE University at which our engineers teach the basics of wiring, programming, machining, etc. Some of the presentations are available on our website at http://moe365.org/moeu.php

Perhaps these might give you a start.

[Not2B]

Originally Posted by Donut

Here's a question for all you teams that have been doing some kind of underclassmen training, if you are doing a mock game or fun robots or repairing robots, how do you get the time to do this in the fall? Are you a class (so you actually have in school time to do this), or do you make after school time?

Our team has always attempted to do some kind of teaching thing in the fall with miserable failures every single year, mainly due to a lack of time since it is hard to get teachers to spend that much time in the fall when they know they'll be spending so much in the spring (we are a club, not a team or class), and because at least 1/2 the club is typically in marching band, killing alot of the available after school time.

We meet for 1.5 hours on weds, every week during the fall. It's a bit of time, maybe hard for your team to do. Now, sub-teams meet outside of those meetings as needed. (Animation learns the software on the weekends... mostly at midnight I think...)

Our ping pong ball game, straw tower, and mashmellow structure game takes 2 hours. 0:15 to explain, 1:15 to build and test, and 0:30 to run the game. Simple, and most importantly, CHEAP. No one has to buy anything. Most materials are donated by the office I work in, and I hit Office Max/Staples for everything else.

Robocode is totally free, and people work on it in their free time (use our website to work out issues.)

Don't try to do a full robot if you can't support it (time OR money). See what you CAN do, see what you WANT to teach, and find a way to fit them together. If you go to grand, and don't finish, you'll frustrate the new people. It's good to have several small successes early.

Example - I want to teach structures... but I can't take 20 hours, I can't get welding in the cafe we meet in, and I can't buy the materials. But I can get a box of straws and tape, and we can spend 2 hours building a tower to hold a 20 oz bottle of Mt. Dew (of which the winners get to sample.)

[Donut]

Originally Posted by Not2B

We meet for 1.5 hours on weds, every week during the fall. It's a bit of time, maybe hard for your team to do. Now, sub-teams meet outside of those meetings as needed. (Animation learns the software on the weekends... mostly at midnight I think...)

Actually, we usually meet every Wednesday after school for 1 to 2 hours during the fall. Officers have their own meeting to discuss a few things too. The big thing we are missing there is sub-team meetings (none), partially because we've never really "forced" people onto teams and many people don't choose teams until further in (we've had people switch the build team they're on part way through build season before).

Originally Posted by Not2B

Don't try to do a full robot if you can't support it (time OR money). See what you CAN do, see what you WANT to teach, and find a way to fit them together. If you go to grand, and don't finish, you'll frustrate the new people. It's good to have several small successes early.

This has probably been the real killer of that available time though. We've never tried a full scale robot, instead we've attempted sumo-bots and things like that 3 different years, but still had bad results because...
1. We have no permanent classroom or anything to leave stuff around in, so anytime we want to build stuff we must get it out of the closet, move it to the other room, then end early enough to get everything back in.
2. We had to meet right after school during the fall, and most (if not all) mentors are not able to come this early to help teach things. The teachers at the school cannot really help because we have no teachers that teach anything about robotics (no robotics class, no engineering class, no metal working class, no electricity or circuit classes, and potentially no programming classes within the next few years), and the teachers of somewhat related subjects (programming, physics, building trades) are unable to help due to commitments with other clubs.
3. Summers seem to be cursed when it comes to meetings, so the officers usually have not planned anything out ahead of time and are trying to decide what to do for the fall, during the fall.

We did manage to actually build and compete using sumo-bots one year, but they were still an ineffective teaching tool, for whatever reason.

I like your ideas for cheaper less time consuming options. Money is not really a problem, though if we need to buy anything that can't be bought from pocket money it will need to be done far in advance since the PO system takes so long.

I'll post some of the things I'm thinking of later on, when we actually start getting down to planning. We're thinking of things right now, but for now are making sure everything gets finished and set up for next year to actually have a club.