Website Design & Functionality Awards

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

(Emphasis Mine)
...FIRST is not about education...

Ironic then that FIRST just sent out an email about voting for them in the TakePart Challenge as listed under Education...

I don't disagree with the mentor/student balance thing, just bringing up a point that it is about education. Education can be in many forms: lecturing, showing, doing, etc. We are educating students in what it is like to be an engineer, and exposing them to science & technology.

Not sure I have a formal opinion about canned websites & awards. Coding HTML is becoming ancient. Just like we don't sit down and write assembly to program our robots. If someone can efficiently use a tool to come up with a great design that conveys their information, that's just like real life.

[Dustin Shadbolt]

I agree with Andrew. I used Joomla for our site but I'm now thinking about switching to wordpress. Even though I'm not on the team as a student but as a mentor/helper, I'm still planning the site. We are a small team, and need a website that can function. I'm sure I could hand code a site from scratch (I have experience) but that would limit me and the programming student to being the only one to update it. I'm sure the students are still inspired to do the work, but they also learn the fact that they can use pre-built frameworks. It's all about choosing the right tools for the job. Imo that is what should matter the most in the website category. Using a CMS doesn't mean you don't know how to "code", but it shows that you can evaluate the situation and choose the best tool to complete your task. And plus you can add custom plugins and a custom theme.

Just my thoughts.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Kims Robot

Ironic then that FIRST just sent out an email about voting for them in the TakePart Challenge as listed under Education...

I don't disagree with the mentor/student balance thing, just bringing up a point that it is about education. Education can be in many forms: lecturing, showing, doing, etc. We are educating students in what it is like to be an engineer, and exposing them to science & technology.

Not sure I have a formal opinion about canned websites & awards. Coding HTML is becoming ancient. Just like we don't sit down and write assembly to program our robots. If someone can efficiently use a tool to come up with a great design that conveys their information, that's just like real life.

True, viewing inspiration as a form of education is a new concept to me. Thanks for pointing that out.

(And as a brief aside, I actually was writing assembly code earlier today...ok, it was for a class.)

[likzuz]

To Chris is Me, Not everyone at the regional judges it. The Web/Animation/Graphic Mentor for our team judged at Kansas City this year and he was given only a few websites to look at. Seeing as Web was his job he graded fairly critically knowing what to expect out of these websites. The one team he said had it all ended up losing to a team that was judged by an easier judge. It's just not fair to them.

As to those who are talking about Content Management Systems, eg. Wordpress, Joomla, Etc, it's up to you. Team 1710 has built their own CMS for the last two years and it is an amazing learning experience. I think it's fine if you use a CMS that is already made but if two websites are equal in terms of content, graphics and functionality but one used a CMS while the other made theirs. I think the one who made theirs should win because of the effort.

As for FIRST not being about educating, I must whole heartedly disagree. I've learned so much from my mentors and this is what has made FIRST unique to me. What's the point of building a robot/website/animation/business plan if you never learn anything from it? You can inspire people all you want but until they are educated it's all useless.

[KathieK]

The evaluators spend 45-60 minutes per site, minimum. It's difficult to find enough judges who have knowledge about websites, but no connections to individual teams so that each site gets the required 4-5 evaluations. The Regionals that I am involved with have many teams submitting so each evaluator is assigned anywhere from 12-20 sites. An advantage is that the evaluations are done online so I can use people from other parts of the country who are not affiliated with my teams, but the disadvantage is that we're completely anonymous - no recognition is ever given, the judges are not acknowledged in person.

http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles...20 manual.pdf our evaluation system is almost exactly as written here in your criteria for the award. The custom coding question is only one of many things that you are ranked on. I don't think the intent was to exclude CMS use but rather, to encourage web design and not using a template commonly available (I know I didn't say that correctly...) But I can see where you're coming from and will mention it to FIRST.

[likzuz]

As for the reviews, you are right it is very specific. I just wish it was accompanied with a "this is what the national reviewers would consider a 4" or a 2 or a 3.

I'm not knocking FIRST. I realize how tough it is to find volunteers and they are doing a great job as it is. I just wish their was examples and standards set for the judges to base off of. A lot of it is subjective and one person's 4 is another person's 2.

Overall though I'm glad how much consideration FIRST puts towards websites. Call me a true FIRST kid but I just wish things were more objective =P. No matter what though we'll keep hacking away at the websites we make and it is a huge learning experience. The php/web design/Cold Fusion/etc. I've learned has been more than any class could teach me.

[rsisk]

Some objective standards can be applied to website judging fairly easily. There are sites that show if a site meets HTML standards and accessibility standards.

Bringing in a subjective viewpoint in the judging moves the websites in a direction to answer the question of how the general public would view the site which is important. The subjective nature of the judging is tempered by the fact that several judges review the site and their scoring is averaged to help mitigate any outliers. This also helps smooth out the scoring system where some judges tend to score higher or lower than others.