Website Design & Functionality Awards

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by aechmtwash11

I agree there are some awesome pre-made systems out there. However in the spirit of FIRST students should do the work.

Also, one of FRC's main goals is to give students a feel for the activities that surround a successful business. I have never seen any company that uses a premade system for their websites!

(Emphasis Mine)

A website is a tool, precisely how you use that tool lies entirely within your team. While 397 had a website we used Wordpress. This is not because we didn't have mentors or students more than capable of writing a webpage from scratch (I did websites professionally for the last couple years). We used it because we wanted to have a functional website that was intuitive for any member of our team to add information to. Remember what I said about it being a tool? The purpose of a website is to allow people to access the data they want in an efficient manner. We felt the most efficient way was to utilize a framework designed for that.

Now, for the part I emphasized. FIRST is not about education. You can argue this all you want but until FIRST changes its name to FERST (For Education and Recognition of Science and Technology) I will stand by that my job as a mentor is to inspire and not always educate. FRC should never be all mentors or all students but a mixture of the two working together inspiring each other. That is the spirit of FIRST.