Poor Dean's Homework 2013 Turnout

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by ChrisH

Maybe most of us would rather build robots than make videos. While making videos is a lot easier than it used to be, it still requires a specific skill set to do well, and you can only be good at a limited number of things.

So if your team has a group of students that passionately wants to TELL the FIRST story, go for it. But don't get disappointed with teams that are busy BEING the FIRST story for not being storytellers too.

Then I think you are missing a large part of what it means to be on a FIRST team. IMHO.

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Then I think you are missing a large part of what it means to be on a FIRST team. IMHO.

For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

We all have different ways of inspiring and recognizing science and technology. A video is one tool, but by no means the only tool. Nothing is one-size fits all.

A business must make priority calls due to limited resources, time, money, knowledge base, etc. I think that teams who display this active decision are demonstrating a clear understanding of a tenet of business practice.

Do not presume that your definition of what it means to be on a FIRST team is universal, and do not presume that you have the right answers for every team.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Then I think you are missing a large part of what it means to be on a FIRST team. IMHO.

Haha right... the Beach Bots are missing what it means to be on a FIRST team.

But seriously, a lot of teams use the off-season to scrape together funding so they can simply exist next year, and you're upset that they didn't make a documentary video in their off-season instead?

Our team is busy designing a practice drive and teaching students how to CAD, improving our relationships with sponsors, using our previous season's robot to demonstrate & inspire at football games every week, and more. It's my job to ensure our students are ready for build season and I'm sorry to say that making a documentary video doesn't help us out in that aspect.

Every team has their priorities and I don't think you have the right to make a judgement call on a team's character because they didn't do a video for FIRST.

[wilsonmw04]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Then I think you are missing a large part of what it means to be on a FIRST team. IMHO.

Let me rephrase:

Why can't we BE the FIRST story and TELL it at the same time?


And with that I will take off me teacher hat and step down from my soapbox.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Let me rephrase:

Why can't we BE the FIRST story and TELL it at the same time?

Because we don't have ENOUGH FIRST stories available to do the telling!

Let me explain this one: Each student (and in some cases, the mentors) is a FIRST story, and has one. The problem is that many of them are distinctly unavailable during the summer, or during meetings of another activity, or at some other time that is convenient for telling the story, for a variety of reasons not necessarily relating to lack of interest. A larger team has more members that might be available, but large/huge teams tend to be the exception rather than the rule, particularly if all their students are fully active!

In other words, there is a severe lack of available manpower to do the telling and do what is needed to build a robot* at the same time. Time to get some more inspiration going!

*This "what is needed" includes fundraising, outreach demonstrations, keeping up with schoolwork, robot building/maintenance, moving shops if needed, planning logistics, and all the other stuff that goes into showing up at competition with a robot.

[BJT]

1. Things we need to do
2. Things we should do
3. Things we could do

Middle of list 2 is a good year. Deans homework is not in list 2.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Wow, I see a whole lot of excuses here. It's a two minute video. Most everyone has a video camera in their pocket right now. There are various free video editing software suites for educational use. Even if you don't meet during the summer, there were 3 months from Sept to now to get something together.


If it wasn't a priority, that's fine, but don't blame FIRST or Dean if you didn't get your homework done. Blame yourself.

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

I don't know. It seems that way: there was no reward for doing it, it wasn't mandatory, it wasn't advertised. The time frame was all wrong, etc.

Maybe, this whole thread just rubs me the wrong way. I teach and hear excuses about not getting homework done. Some of the posts here reminded me of my students.

I don't get it: did the fact that it was called "homework" imply to you that it was the same as homework from school, and should thus have been given equal regard? I don't think that's a well-founded presumption.

The rationale for doing any kind of homework should be a clear connection to greater understanding, future accomplishments and perhaps even societal benefit in general—not merely the fact that some authority figure said to do it. In that frame of mind, there are plenty of good reasons not to do homework—if it can be expected that greater benefits accrue from those alternative activities.

If the homework wasn't sufficiently related to the mutual objectives of FIRST and the teams, or untimely, or uninteresting, then we should by all means blame the parties actually responsible, whether they be FIRST's leaders, our teammates or ourselves.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

Then I think you are missing a large part of what it means to be on a FIRST team. IMHO.

I think that judging someone based on what their ideals appear to be from one post is also missing what it means to be in FIRST.

[Laaba 80]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

To pull something liek this off, you'd have to probably be a large team of 70 or more students where a dedicated video subteam can justifiably form and not fold into an operations/outreach/media subteam, you'd have to meet all year, you'd have to have the available equipment, prior b-roll footage, people available to interview, and time on top of everything everyone does inside and outside of robotics the rest of the year,

Don't you think this is a little extreme? Around 40 teams were able to send in a robot unveil video for the top 25 premier 3 days after ship day, and over 100 were made at some point last season.

That said, I really hope FIRST utilizes some of the awesome unveil videos that are already being produced. Who wouldn't be interested after seeing one of 118's videos? Maybe the next homework assignment should be to make a robot unveil video.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

Don't you think this is a little extreme? Around 40 teams were able to send in a robot unveil video for the top 25 premier 3 days after ship day, and over 100 were made at some point last season.

That said, I really hope FIRST utilizes some of the awesome unveil videos that are already being produced. Who wouldn't be interested after seeing one of 118's videos? Maybe the next homework assignment should be to make a robot unveil video.

Robot reveals are
a) not always FIRST quality submissions (truthfully, I'd say fewer than 5% are)
b) "made themselves" because everyone builds a robot and puts it on some kind of field at some point in time
c) not outreach events. This video required a worthwhile non-robot activity, and outreach footage requires an outreach activity worth documenting, properly documenting the event, and having enough footage from the event to create a submission FIRST-quality
d)made during a time where students are not taking AP exams, state exams, and finals, prepping for graduation, and teams are not changing the guard in leadership and starting to fund for their next cycle.

I don't know about your team, but whenever I've been on a team making a submission for something, you put the award submission/robot/chairman's video/judges handout/etc. through a battery of criticism and scrutiny. Keep in mind that these are things that we should be doing and try to do properly every year. This is different than an ideal target but not one without any pitfalls associated with not doing it. Sure it's something that, if I was on a team, I would want them to do it, but teams easily can find other priorities that range from recruiting to funding their next season, or those priorities become problems that find them.

To document whatever cool thing you're doing, you would need not only the people actually heading up the activity/event/thing to follow through on the plan, you need to have people there almost specifically to properly document it. Then if you have these standards in place for all other FIRST submissions, you put through the ringer, all over the summer.

Say I'm making excuses (I don't know who for, I am not actively associated with a team), say I'm totally off base, but, well...

Just like the ancient trifecta of worn-out debates on Chief Delphi ("mentor-built" robots, adults as coaches, and building a second robot for practice) these are all totally optional things that teams have the luxury of choosing to forgo if they wish, or are backed into a corner by a dearth of the resources necessary to even consider any of these decisions (low mentor availability, low revenue), and I'm pretty sure we've all resolved to reach a loose consensus of "Whatever you do in your team is your business."

Yet here, we have seen even more extreme debate over an even smaller issue. I guess you could call that the status quo here, I guess you could say ignorance is a two-way street, and I guess everyone could talk in circles for weeks on end about how their position is superior empirically, morally, and Dean Kamen himself came down from Mt. Sinai to preach the exact words you speak... but at the end of the day, whatever you do on your team is your business. I'm confident FIRST will still be here tomorrow even though few teams did their Dean's List homework. Teams will still be out in their community and in their build spaces.

------

Also, just because it's been bothering me, all I have to say about this

And out of 3,800 Jr. FLL Teams, none submitted an entry. 0%.

is this:

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

First, most teams aren't at champs, and aren't there to hear the homework being given. For those teams, their season is already over, and they might not meet again until the fall. And once they do meet again, they're probably focused on other things (recruitment, fundraising, training, etc) and just don't think to go look up what Dean's Homework was.

Second, the benefit for teams isn't always directly apparent. It's not like the homework is required or earns them any direct benefit... the benefits come from how a team uses the results of the homework.

So, how do we fix this?

First, word on Dean's Homework needs to get out there more - Teams should be unable to avoid learning what the homework is (and by teams, I mean both mentors and students - it can easily be ignored in e-mail blasts that generally just go to mentors). We need to start talking about it at champs. Word needs to go out to the regional directors/planning committees to talk about it at off-season events in their area. We need to talk about it at kickoff. And it needs to not be due until a team's first regional (I know some teams that haven't even yet met since their last regional back in March!). I would be willing to bet that I could ask at my team's next meeting, and none of the students would be able to tell me what the homework was.

Second, there needs to be some sort of direct benefit/recognition to teams for completing the homework. While it adds some administrative overhead, I would support making completing the homework a requirement for Chairman's in future years. That one small change would get Dean's Homework much more visibility and participation.

I don't like mandatory requirements. I would rather support a positive reinforcement system. Say that the teams that complete Dean's homework receive a small rebate (say $200) from the next year's entrance fee.

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I don't like mandatory requirements. I would rather support a positive reinforcement system. Say that the teams that complete Dean's homework receive a small rebate (say $200) from the next year's entrance fee.

I don't know if a monetary incentive is the right way to go. Something I think would provide an incentive to the robot focused teams would be to allow teams who submit the homework to go in an hour early at their regionals.

[BrendanB]

Teams should do the homework because they want to do the homework not because there are financial or other incentives.

FIRST should stop calling it "homework" just the term enough doesn't makes you want to do it.

I also agree that there should be better mediums used to get the word out and its time frame should be adjusted. Honestly, the best time for our team to get it done is during the build season. Yes it is our busiest time of the year but it is when we meet the most and have the most student manpower on hand. Our fall meetings are the only other time of the year where we have a large group of students in the shop every week, but during this time our focus is to expose new students to FIRST and expand on member skills/capabilities. Even now we don't have enough time to accomplish what we want so adding on a video production would add a lot to our plate.

Just my $0.02.

[Jon Stratis]

Since I finally have the link... a video my team put together for the sake of trying to win $500 in a competition that just ended yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbL65upUVTM

It may not have all the aspects FIRST was looking for in its video (after all, the target audience and requirements were different), but it was still something put together in under 2 weeks since we found out about the contest (and honestly, it's better and more polished than almost all of the other videos submitted... the others are generally just two minutes of someone walking around taking video on their phone, no post-processing at all). So it really doesn't take all that much to throw something together from material many teams already have in abundance from past years. Better and more polished videos will take longer, but even something thrown together last minute can get the point across.

[MrForbes]

I was busy working with 842 who is involved with the making of a real (as in to be released in theaters next year) movie about their team. Not their FIRST team, their underwater robot team, although there is overlap....the main character, portrayed by George Lopez, is a composite of WFA winner Fredi Lajvardi and Dr Allan Cameron, both mentors on 842.

We might even see a NERDS (1726) robot in the movie. And a Bit Buckets (4183) robot.

But yeah....better notification of and motivation to complete the homework would help.