pic: Districts in Minnesota Flyer

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by DareDad

Could you expand on that statement? I've seen no indication of FRC in Minnesota "growing for the sake of growth", rather it's been quite organic.

What Eric said is exactly correct, at least in my opinion.

I work with multiple MN teams via email and over the phone throughout the season to provide remote support. Too often, teams were created with money but no outside mentor support. Essentially, when you talk to a principal/district official and say you have $5,000+ to start a FRC team in their school and it is an amazing experience for students, who is going to say no? All they need to do is find a teacher to officially be coach and the administrator/district official can be the alternate contact. You then have a teacher coaching a team who potentially has no engineering background. I can speak from experience that this happens, I've worked with multiple teachers who have had close to zero computer experience. I have no issue being tech support for teams and I love to help but what we've done is almost a disservice to these students. My favorite example is a 3rd year team that had 5 students and 1 mentor. I worked with the mentor for two weeks over the phone and email to get labview up and running and their electronics connected correctly. I know how amazing this program can be; it inspired me, but in this case we were not inspiring these students. We threw $5,000 at a team ($1,000/student) that struggled to get even the basics done and that makes me incredibly sad inside.

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Minnesota grew so fast that the support for all those teams to truly be successful couldn't possibly be there.

If you think throwing $ at teams and then watching them routinely flounder to pass inspection or even field a robot that moves is beneficial to the kids on their team or the kids on other teams your wrong.

Quality sustainable growth is what benefits all. Quantity growth is not.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by ehochstein

What Eric said is exactly correct, at least in my opinion.

I work with multiple MN teams via email and over the phone throughout the season to provide remote support. Too often, teams were created with money but no outside mentor support. Essentially, when you talk to a principal/district official and say you have $5,000+ to start a FRC team in their school and it is an amazing experience for students, who is going to say no? All they need to do is find a teacher to officially be coach and the administrator/district official can be the alternate contact. You then have a teacher coaching a team who potentially has no engineering background. I can speak from experience that this happens, I've worked with multiple teachers who have had close to zero computer experience. I have no issue being tech support for teams and I love to help but what we've done is almost a disservice to these students. My favorite example is a 3rd year team that had 5 students and 1 mentor. I worked with the mentor for two weeks over the phone and email to get labview up and running and their electronics connected correctly. I know how amazing this program can be; it inspired me, but in this case we were not inspiring these students. We threw $5,000 at a team ($1,000/student) that struggled to get even the basics done and that makes me incredibly sad inside.

Wiscosin just passed a bill that will throw money at teams and I'm fearful that Wiscosin will have this same problem. Especially because the RPC in Wiscosin has the flawed* view that we need more teams before we switch to districts.

*North Carolina and Indiana has proved this thought false.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by EricLeifermann

Wiscosin just passed a bill that will throw money at teams and I'm fearful that Wiscosin will have this same problem. Especially because the RPC in Wiscosin has the flawed* view that we need more teams before we switch to districts.

*North Carolina and Indiana has proved this thought false.

The small single state district format is also in GA. I assume it is working there as well. I will attest to the primary reason that the single state district systems work is because they have a very great backbone of teams that pulls it all together. NC had a lot of teams volunteer to pull triple duty so they could get the system to work the way they wanted. We were VERY impressed and felt very welcomed in North Carolina because they have a lot of people that "get it".

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by ehochstein

What Eric said is exactly correct, at least in my opinion.

I work with multiple MN teams via email and over the phone throughout the season to provide remote support. Too often, teams were created with money but no outside mentor support. Essentially, when you talk to a principal/district official and say you have $5,000+ to start a FRC team in their school and it is an amazing experience for students, who is going to say no?

Well why are you doing that then?

The state of Minnesota does not have grants to new teams. At least not that I've heard of. I know that Michigan and Iowa give (or gave) grants to teams but if Minnesota doesn't.

I go to MNFIRST.org and I see a button to donate, but I don't see any "free money for teams" verbiage.

So I ask again, explain how Minnesota is encouraging growth for the sake of growth?

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by DareDad

Well why are you doing that then?

The state of Minnesota does not have grants to new teams. At least not that I've heard of. I know that Michigan and Iowa give (or gave) grants to teams but if Minnesota doesn't.

I go to MNFIRST.org and I see a button to donate, but I don't see any "free money for teams" verbiage.

So I ask again, explain how Minnesota is encouraging growth for the sake of growth?

My old team (2220) was started because somebody in our city saw that a company was offering grants to start an FRC team. He basically said he'd start one at Eagan High School and then told the school administration they had a new FRC team. From what I've heard of the team's early years, it's somewhat impressive that the team even came back for a second year, much less have gone on to become the impressive team they are now.

The team I currently mentor, 2667, exists because of a single sponsor. Despite having almost no communication with them last year and no idea that they planned to continue sponsoring the team (something that we tried very hard to correct), they paid for our fee this year. We did not know if we would be able to compete until that check came, completely unexpectedly, in the mail.

These are not isolated cases. There is a pattern here. Many teams here are constantly on the edge of disappearing, and don't have the resources or knowledge to effectively teach or inspire students.

Yesterday, I was talking with 2220's old faculty adviser, and he told me that going to the Wisconsin regional back in 2007 is the only reason the team came back for another season. I have to imagine that there are a number of teams that are perpetually in that situation.

[Road Rash]

Originally Posted by DareDad

I go to MNFIRST.org and I see a button to donate, but I don't see any "free money for teams" verbiage.

Perhaps he's referencing the grant money available from FIRST or somewhere else.

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by Road Rash

Perhaps he's referencing the grant money available from FIRST or somewhere else.

My point being that it's not a Minnesota thing. Minnesota has had phenomenal growth the past few years, greater than the rest of the US, but it's not because the state is throwing money at creating teams.

As I said upthread, the growth is organic, not because one major entity is pushing a grow at any cost strategy.

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by DareDad

My point being that it's not a Minnesota thing. Minnesota has had phenomenal growth the past few years, greater than the rest of the US, but it's not because the state is throwing money at creating teams.

As I said upthread, the growth is organic, not because one major entity is pushing a grow at any cost strategy.

Not the state. The Fortune 500 companies and other generous corporate sponsors in the Twin Cities and throughout the state. This is nothing but commendable on the sponsors' parts, and has also been a major focus of the RPC since the beginning (connecting these sponsors and their grant money with new teams). We've seen enormous benefits and phenomenal growth. But many teams have lacked the mentor support and mature infrastructure to do well. It's not a novel idea that growing very very quickly will have unintended side effects and shortcomings.

[Road Rash]

Originally Posted by DareDad

My point being that it's not a Minnesota thing. Minnesota has had phenomenal growth the past few years, greater than the rest of the US, but it's not because the state is throwing money at creating teams.

As I said upthread, the growth is organic, not because one major entity is pushing a grow at any cost strategy.

I see your point. It would be interesting to know why growth has exploded in MN if it weren't from some cash infusion.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Erik,
I have to disagree. The level of rookie team robots and their ability to pass inspection is higher in Minnesota then in almost any other region that I attend. Australia is also doing what Minnesota does, and has many training exercises for rookie and veteran teams alike. Australia has similar issues that Minnesota has but on a much larger scale. If you want to look at small teams consider an Australian outback team from a town of 150 people, that has a K-12 school with 18 students.
Minnesota is not the only region that lacks engineering support. Wave is very lucky that they have good engineering support but take a look at other teams in your state. They make some pretty great robots too. Compared to your team, they have a fraction of the engineers.
It is not possible to measure inspiration. We may never know if our students succeed because we may not hear from them. But I know in my heart that we are inspiring small, struggling teams as well as large teams. My inspiration in Duluth this year came from a small team from Grand Marais. Those students faced some serious issues when they opened the bag. We worked with them and made suggestions and everyone of their team jumped in and took care of the robot. They did a spectacular job and had a functioning robot that anyone would have liked to ally with.
If we know this program is having that kind of an effect on students, how can growth be bad? Why would anyone stand in the way of giving a rural team the opportunity to join something that big city teams have been enjoying? How can we deny FRC, FTC or FLL to a student simply because they live in a small town, or have to travel 140 km through the outback to school or have no engineering support? This is my 21st season and I have seen the effect on students for a long time. I have met students who experienced their first stay in a hotel or their first travel away from their hometown going to a FIRST event. I have met students who were given the choice of joining a team or going to jail. I have seen students who never considered anything but work after high school (if they graduated at all), go on to full ride scholarship at a good university. They are the lucky ones, I can't deny that chance to anyone.

[Shrub]

Hello all,

I am currently in the process of translating this flyer in Spanish (and also adding more background information on the regional system for parents), and was wondering if anyone would be interested in perhaps translating it into another language.

[gblake]

Two points

1) if people are going to copy this, let's improve the sentence at the bottom of the flyer. "Transition" is a (3-syllable) noun, not a verb. In English, you don't change nouns into gerunds by appending "ing"; instead nouns simply stay nouns. I suggest picking a nice simple verb like "switch", "change", or "move" to use in the sentence at the bottom of the flyer.

2) If this flyer is intended to sell folks, who don't understand the bigger picture, on the what's-in-it-for-me aspects of competing within a District, it's fine. If the flyer is supposed to deliver a complete and accurate picture of all the changes involved in a switch from Regionals to a District, it is obviously, hopelessly one-sided and incomplete - incomplete to the point of being misleading.

I suggest that anyone thinking of reusing the flyer should think twice before laying a foundation that only emphasizes assumed benefits, and leaves out the costs of paying the pipers.

Blake
PS: I didn't do a grammar check on the entire flyer, but if the flyer is going to be reused, someone well-qualified should do one. If users can't find a well-qualified editor (then they aren't looking very hard), they can ask me to take the time for a thorough grammar review.

[Shrub]

Originally Posted by gblake

snipsnip

Hi,
Jess and I are both communication majors. We are also having many people peer-review the flyers (in both languages), and will be taking your considerations into account.

The Spanish flyer is specifically going to parents and family members that have students in FIRST, as it is hard to explain the district model without explaining the regional model - both will be covered in the flyer. This flyer was given out to teams and is supposed to be "...intended to sell folks, who don't understand the bigger picture, on the what's-in-it-for-me aspects of competing within a District" as you said.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by Shrub

The Spanish flyer is specifically going to parents and family members that have students in FIRST, as it is hard to explain the district model without explaining the regional model - both will be covered in the flyer. This flyer was given out to teams and is supposed to be "...intended to sell folks, who don't understand the bigger picture, on the what's-in-it-for-me aspects of competing within a District" as you said.

I'm not sure If I was too subtle in my other post, so I'll be more clear.

In this context, "selling" people is not the same as educating them, and in my opinion it is a terrible, unprofessional thing to attempt.

One-sided "selling" creates a mess, not a Distrct. Do you want to create a mess?

Blake

[Shrub]

Originally Posted by gblake

snip

Hey again,
Thank you for your viewpoint - I do agree that some of the drawbacks to the transition model should be covered, as well as emphasizing the need for a nonprofit base and volunteer base to create a district system. I will take this into account when translating and explaining this flyer.
Thank you.