"FIRST in the Classroom" - a fall semester high school course

[yaron]

Originally Posted by ICntIHaveRbtics

FIRST in the Classroom
Taking a class in FIRST Robotics for high school credit

Purpose:
To allow students who participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition to receive elective credit towards their high school diploma while learning about and establishing all the different aspects of a FIRST Robotics Competition team that go into competing each year. Upon completion of "FIRST in the Classroom", students will receive high school elective credits towards the required credit count at their High School. While this class would only be offered in a fall semester, it aims to entice students who take the class to continue with FIRST Robotics after school when the semester is over and the build/competition season has started. Subsequently, by having a FRC class, the FRC team that's associated with the school would receive the benefit of having a contact/body within the school to help them foster the FIRST relationship with the school community.

How a "FIRST in the Classroom" Course would be "very loosely" structured (by "units"):
Engineering Basics
Programming Basics
Team Management Basics (Business Plan?)
Marketing & Fundraising Basics
???

Some specific assignments/activities could include:
Basic metal shop safety / how to use machines (drill press, milling machine, bandsaw)
Program a very simple small robot in the same language as what the FRC robots would use
Establish a business plan for the team for the upcoming season
Split up into pairs and be assigned a business to approach about sponsorship

MisCar team 1574 has developed a series of workshops inviting other teams to participate in.
For our team member we do have a course, meeting every friday from 09:00 to 13:00. teaching the basics of mechanics, electronics and control, programming and CAD.
We have actually been thinking of inserting learning material to our website but still did not manage to get it done, maybe next year.
Good luck in the 2011 season.

[Leeebowitz]

Our team has a different kind of system. Since our team has very low numbers of students, we have an "Engineering" class run by the teacher who is also the head of our team. Signing up for Engineering doesn't mean you have to be with the team. In theory, the course has nothing to do with FIRST. You can go through the course without even knowing what FIRST is. However, credit is given in the class for working on FIRST-related projects. And, knowing the teacher, I'm sure that at least several times the opportunity to be on the team is brought up.

The class is mainly a CADing and building class, so people don't get exposed to other aspects such as the programming or fundraising, but it's a good way to recruit new students and reward students already on the team.

The class described in the original post, while similar in many ways, most likely wouldn't work with our team simply because we don't have enough students and even calling the class "Robotics" and not requiring participation on the team would scare most of the people in Engineering away. I bring this up simply as a suggestion for teams who want a class but don't have enough students involved to have a class entirely devoted to FIRST.