School/Team Relationships 2

[Ricky Q.]

How much money do you receive from your school PTA, ASB, etc? We aren't funded by the Oconomowoc Area School District officially.

Is robotics only a club or is it a class for credits at your school? Right now it is only a club, but they are starting the wheels in motion to integrate it with a "Principles Of Engineering" Class or something like that.

Who does all the PR work for your team (shirts, website, brochurs, fundraising, etc)? We also have members on the team work on that, and almost everyone helps out with fundraising, because we need to do so much.

Does your team work at school or a nearby college? (Where does the building take place and where are team meetings held?) We do almost everything except our weekly Monday morning team meetings at our main sponsor's (Quest Technologies) building which is about 5 mins from the high school. We have had very limited facilites at our school, so there is nothing really to do there, that is changing though, with improvements to the Tech Area of the school, so we shall see.

What is the general attitude of people in your school toward your robotics team? Do they think it is cool or nerdy?
It has gotten better over the years, people support it and will ask us questions and look at the bots, most kids think its cool.

On a more individual note, if your team group can't decide on something or they are just sitting around lazy, do you try to get the group to work or do you just do things yourself?
There is that group of core people that will almost always help you out when you need it, but if people are just refusing I will more than likely take it on myself.

Last, who works with your team, Physics teachers, mechanical engineers, math teachers, art teachers, parents, etc?
We have 2 teachers, an electronics one and a physics teacher. Around 5-6 engineers from Quest that work with us, and alot of parents that are always willing to do something.

[sanddrag]

Originally posted by weedie
Best wishes to you.

Same to you weedie

[Katie Reynolds]

How much money do you receive from your school PTA, ASB, etc?

We usually get a decent amount of money from our school (not liable to say exactly how much) but it is enough for us that, in the past, we have not had to do a whole lot of fundraising. This year will be different though. Not sure why - but I know we need to raise A LOT of money.

Is robotics only a club or is it a class for credits at your school?

As of this fall, we will have an after school class called 'The Basics of FIRST'. I believe it earns you two credits - one first semester (for taking the class) and one second semester (for participating in the Build) You can only take the class once ... but (obviously) can participate in the Build as many times as you want!

Who does all the PR work for your team (shirts, website, brochurs, fundraising, etc)?
We are supposed to have a subteam who handles all of that but basically is comes down to whoever volunteers to do that. Shirts are printed by our team members in the graphic arts room at our school. One of our teachers handles doing the website. Brochures are made by whoever feels like doing them. Fundraising has been pretty much non-existant up to this point (selling candybars are the only form of fundraising we've done up until now).

Does your team work at school or a nearby college? (Where does the building take place and where are team meetings held?)

For the most part, we work in our school's tech center. We have a graphic arts room (for printing shirts, making brochures, etc.), a wood shop (good for building the crate in, or just to use for some extra work space), the machine shop (where we machine our parts), the auto shop (to practice in), and the tech center (two nice big rooms - one with computers and one with tables, where we work). We also have "the back room" which is a tiny room in the tech center where they stick all of us controls people Then there's the Tech. Sometimes, we have our students go out to FVTC (Fox Valley Technical College) and machine more complicated parts there, that we can't make at school. The neat thing about that is the students still do the machining at the Tech.

What is the general attitude of people in your school toward your robotics team? Do they think it is cool or nerdy?

... Most people at our school think it's really cool or just don't care at all. When I first joined the team, people in my class (who not on the team) Were kind of like, "why would you put in all that time to build a robot ... ... ?" But noe most of them think FIRST is pretty cool and admire the people in it for being able to put so much time and work into a program like this.

On a more individual note, if your team group can't decide on something or they are just sitting around lazy, do you try to get the group to work or do you just do things yourself?

Depends on what the situation is.

Last, who works with your team, Physics teachers, mechanical engineers, math teachers, art teachers, parents, etc?

We have two tech ed teachers from our high school, a lot of engineers from Plexus and a few engineers from Kimberly Clark that help out with the team. We also have a former Plexus engineer and a photographer (which happens to be the father of one of our Plexus engineers!)

- Katie