7 Arizona Schools Via For Recognition at FIRST Internationals

[falconmaster]

More of Dean's home work gettin done!

Saturday, April 12, 2008
Seven Arizona high school robotics teams via for international acclaim

At some point, you'd think that Allan Cameron would get used to this. Once again, the retired Carl Hayden High School teacher will take a group of students into the international spotlight, leading more than 25 teenagers to the final competition of the FIRST Robotics Championship on April 17 through 19 in Atlanta. More than 1,300 teams will compete. The majority come from the U.S., although schools from Brazil, Canada, Israel and Mexico will compete as well.

This is the seventh year Cameron will field a FIRST team, an acronym meaning For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. There are numerous FIRST robotics programs in nearly every level of education. FIRST has five categories of competition, from first grade through high school and has operations in 50 states, nine Canadian provinces and in 37 total countries. There are state and regional championships in each category. But the high school students, like Little League All-Star teams seen on ESPN, tend to receive most of the attention.

The high school teams have six weeks to solve a problem through a standard "kit of parts" distributed to all involved. They work with school and industry mentors to solve engineering-based questions under a common set of rules.

And yes, they build robots. The teams will compete on a 54-foot-by-27-foot track, using their remote-controlled robots to manipulate "trackballs". Teams earn points for pushing the balls and their robots past lines in the track.

In Arizona, Cameron and fellow Carl Hayden mentor Fredi Lajvardi helped push school engineering programs like FIRST into the international spotlight a few years ago. He fielded a team of students -- including four undocumented immigrants -- at a school known more for being entrenched in the lower reaches of the Valley's socioeconomic strata than for its electronics prominence. This team, in the National Underwater Robotics Challenge, took on college students. College students from MIT.

Yes, that MIT.

And this bunch of students from Carl Hayden beat MIT and all the other schools involved. Here's a brilliant story detailing their efforts from Wired magazine

Cameron and his Carl Hayden crew are now in their fourth year.

"People wondered 'what does that say about Carl Hayden?' How are we beating kids from MIT? Kids aren't smarter than they were 10 years ago. Kids aren't richer than they were 10 years ago," Cameron said. "No, what one of my students asked was, 'what's wrong with MIT?"

This is the crux of the issue for Cameron. He and the other robotics instructors at other schools with FIRST programs teach in a hands-on environment, where students see and use the practical nature of electronics -- not just the instructions stenciled and buried in a textbook.

This, Cameron said, is the direction that technological education is -- and should be -- going.

This year Paradise Valley High School won the Arizona championship while Highland High School in Gilbert won the most recent regional competition, held last month in Las Vegas.

If this hands-on education is going to continue, private industry must take a role, many educational leaders continue to say. In Arizona, this has reached new heights, as companies like Avnet Inc.,
General Motors Corp.,Honeywell International Inc., Microchip Technology Inc., and Intel Corp. extend their reach further into schools each year. All of those companies, and many others within the state, are not just putting their money where their mouths are, but actually putting engineers where the students are -- in the classroom.

Along with Carl Hayden High School, Paradise Valley High School and Highland High School, James Madison Preparatory School of Tempe and Marcos de Niza High School, Kingman High School, Queen Creek High School, Queen Creek High School and Seton Catholic High School will send teams to Atlanta.

Aside from Paradise Valley, all teams have private industry sponsors who are mentoring the student engineers. Carl Hayden has partnered with Honeywell, and Intel; Highland has been working with engineers from General Motors, ITT Technical Institute,Microchip, and the SIMREX Corp.; Queen Creek students have been under the mentorship of engineers from Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus,Intel, Magma Engineering Co., TRW Automotive and General Motors; the team fielded from James Madison and Marcos de Niza have been working with Orbital Sciences Corp.; Kingman students are being mentored by engineers from Laron Inc., Brackett Aircraft, Praxair Inc., and Chrysler Corp.

Additional sponsors of the teams have provided much needed financial support.

"It is very expensive to send a group of 20 to 30 students to different parts of the country," Cameron said. "We would never have gotten there -- none of us -- without the help from these private organizations."

The Arizona Technology Council and Science Foundation Arizona are also sponsoring teams.


NOTE: AZ Tech News will bring highlights from the teams during the competition. Check back here for updates and pictures.

For more about the teams and the competition, check out their Web sites below (not all teams have working Web sites):

FIRST Robotics Championship

FIRST Robotics Championship Webcast - coming soon

Carl Hayden High School robotics team
Highland High School robotics team
James Madison and Marcos de Niza high schools' robotics team
Paradise Valley High School robotics team
Queen Creek High School robotics team
Seton Catholic High School robotics team

Posted by Ty Young at 10:45 PM 0 comments Links to this post

[BornaE]

Awesome!

Where was this posted?

[falconmaster]

http://www.aztechnews.blogspot.com/

Hey when are you guys going to sign up for NURC. we have -19-20 teams signed up already! We only have room for 24!

[falconmaster]

also we are trying to start our own "little" Chief Delphi postings for AZ teams.

http://groups.google.com/group/first-az-

It may or may not work, but with the number of new teams...we though we would give it a try. We are going to announce an FRC conference sometime soon to plan how we can reach the 100 team goal by next year. Hope you will be a part of the conference.