Leveling the Playing Field with Curriculum - let's make it happen

[lynca]

Originally Posted by EricH

Also, if you're targeting this to rookies, you might want to check out MOEMentum and Team-in-a-Box for some other topics that are helpful to that audience specifically.

Just to add a few more to the list.
MVRT 115 - http://www.mvrt.com/2008/resources/trainings.php
Cyberblue 234 - http://www.cyberblue234.com/whitePapers.html (More for veterans)
DiscoBots 2587 - http://2009.discobots.org/node/7 (has new cRio tutorials)

[Trying to Help]

This topic is so relevant for me. I would absolutely love to see some curricula.

Like many new teams, we know what our strengths are. It's the start of our second year, and we're trying to improve those areas needing help. Some times just having a starting point is important. Consider CAD as an example. People feel strongly about several different platforms. We need a decision path that will enable us to choose one and then learn enough to be able to use it.

If you start a mailing list or some sort of contact list, I'd love to be on it.

- Trying to Help

[xitaqua]

Trying to Help,

You bring a good point in regards to "CAD". I think there is a lot topics that teams would like to be "trained on", while there is other "core classes".

I am thinking core classes that are essential :

FUND 100 Introduction to Robotics Competition
Why robotics competition ?
What makes a good mentor ?

MKT 100 Public Relations
How do I write and distribute a Press Release ?
How do you make and distribute a good 5 minute promo video ?

Cheers,
Marcos.

[JesseK]

There are a couple of things fresh in my mind after the SeaPerch symposium last week so I'll share my initial thoughts on this. To meet national standards for acquiring Perkins Grant dollars for this curriculum, you'll have to match each unit to a national standard. There are other requirements as well.

As an example, you could view what MIT has created for part of the SeaPerch curriculum (9-12) pertaining to the national standards. The caveat: I can't say that every piece of it applies to FRC since it's a completely different program with different motives and methods. So when creating a curriculum you will need to truly understand the motives behind FIRST FRC and how they differ from the MIT curriculum.

The key differences: FIRST robotics are great for industry interaction with education for land-based robots that foster high levels of thought and profound innovations amongst all ages whereas SeaPerch is great for being extremely inexpensive, underwater, micro-macro scalable, and easy to implement for children. Both inspire the next generation to become engineers, whereas FIRST also takes it a step further by trying to persuade our overall culture.

1885 is up to it's ears in robotics curriculum sometimes. If you have any specific questions, I can ask the person who wrote our local SeaPerch, VEX, (new) FLL, and Tech Ed curriculum for specifics.