Drumroll, please... FRCLadder: a video/project/community-driven education platform!

FIRST General Forum
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The Platform: https://www.frcladder.com/

What I need your help with:
Please let me know your thoughts on this site, the reason why I added only programming for now is because I wanted feedback so please reach out! I am also looking for any developers, mentors, students, and teams that would be able to contribute to this site because I want this to be completely community driven!

The reasoning:
I have been talking with FRC teams over the last couple of weeks and recently made a post on CD: Problems with education - #11 by hithu about the problems I have seen within the community to see if other teams were having similar issues. And they were…

What I found was that:
a. Education programs are hard to maintain and even harder to create and can take years of fine-tuning but if there is a reduction in the number of students interested for even one year it can seriously throw off a program.
b. Students are much more likely to learn if they are engaged and aren’t just reading an article or documentation (although both are needed at some point).

This inspired me to think about how I learn and how the students I have worked with learn. And one of the most effective education sites is none other than Khan Academy. I’m not going to go into details about why it’s great because I’m sure you have used it to cram for a test before but the point is that video-based content where you can also apply the skills is extremely effective.

This led me to create FRCLadder: https://www.frcladder.com/ to solve some of the many education problems I have seen in this community.

There are already some great resources out there such as the docs, frcZero, compass alliance, and FIRST’s platform and I seriously recommend you take a look at them. The site I made isn’t meant to reinvent the wheel but instead take the well-built education programs larger teams have and make them more accessible to the community via videos and projects.

I know when I first started every piece of documentation and articles went right over my head but videos especially Zero to Autonomous were amazing at teaching me.

Contact Me:
I want this to be for the community, by the community so please reach out to me via Chief or my email: [email protected] if you have any comments/questions.

The Amazing Contributors Behind This:
Huge thank you to teams: The MidKnight Inventors FRC 1923, RoboTigers 1796, Ellipse 6814, STEAMex 6832!

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A collection of videos like this is a great start. However, what does this provide students that a youtube playlist wouldn’t? Not to be a downer here, just curious what purpose this actually serves for students.

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Great question and please don’t feel bad about critiquing it, the more feedback, the better this project can become!

The idea is that it of course delivers content like a youtube playlist would but it would also add on top of that by having projects. If you look through the “Introduction to Java” course you will see projects below and later on I am planning on implementing FRC Koans or something similar: Team 3550 presents: FRC Java koans for teaching Java to rookie students to the FRC Programming section.

Right now the main issue I have is that I am not that well-versed in the other parts of FRC and I mostly focus on electricals so I had trouble finding what projects would be useful. I plan on implementing more projects in the future but I want the community’s help to do so. Also, there is a lot of variety in FRC such as the various programming languages and CAD software a team could use. If I made the entire application, teams that don’t use the same software as my team does would miss out but the goal with this is that it is constantly evolving with content. For example, if FIRST implements something new like April tags, there is a good chance teams will have content on this and it and this site would be great for them to share it in one place (I know had to do some digging to find courses for sure).

Also although a youtube playlist is great, gamifying the content and tracking progress can help students learn better. And by combining projects, videos, and progress tracking a person has all they need to basically learn about anything.

I hope that answers your question!

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Having a bit of trouble with your link to the website. www.frcladder.com returns a “Sever Not Found” error when I try to access it.

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Hmm that’s odd? I had a couple of people try it just now and it was fine on there end. Maybe give it a couple minutes or try: frcladder.com

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In my case, I was blocked from using on my computer by my security because the domain is so new.
I was able to access from my phone, though.
Also, for material check out: https://www.youtube.com/@qbranchTV/videos
And: https://spectrum3847.org/recommendedreading/

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They look great, thank you for sharing!

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Hello! What specific help are you looking for from students?

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Is there a https version of the site? http is blocked by default on new desktop Chrome installs, and in many schools and IT departments.

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I am looking for anyone who has knowledge in basically any part of FRC to help me figure out what content I should add, to create more content, or to help build out the application itself. Basically any help you can provide would be great, I’m open to any suggestions you may have!

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I am currently trying to get the certification for it to get it setup but it’s a bit complicated so I didn’t have time to do it before releasing it. But I will try to get it done by next week!

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Nice to see such a project! As many said, HTTPS is rather important nowadays, and I would highly recommend looking into https://letsencrypt.org/ for ssl certificates (free), or checking with your hosting provider.

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I am happy to say that it is now https and should be good to go!

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Is this meant to be a programming specific endeavor?

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I believe OP stated only programming resources are on the website right now for feedback purposes but intends to make the site have resources / training for all aspects of FRC (CAD, electrical work, etc.).

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Would you like some business teaching resources as well? I have a lot of stuff I’m willing to share.

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This. Grant writing, sponsorship aquiring, even just how to attract mentors. How to set up a 501c3 as well can help streamline the mountain of paperwork it is.

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Yeah the ideal situation is that this site basically becomes an online collection of information for every part of FRC in an easy to deliver fashion. So I would love any business resources as well!

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Okay I have business, scouting, imagery, outreach, and media learning resources, so just let me know what you want. Some are a little basic because they were made by me and I’m just starting out in FRC, but I’m happy to send them to you if you wish.

In terms of scouting, I’m sure you know that there are many amazing resources available on CD, many teams have created their own scouting applications to streamline the process for themselves and others.

The media resources is just things like producing good media of the team, website stuff, social media things, etc.

If you’re looking for more programming resources, then one of the MidKnight inventors mentors made a pretty good resource doc that helped me start my own programming documentation for my team.

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If you could send basically everything you have my way that would be great! I can start creating a business section on the website for it.

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