I am currently in the works of creating a website to teach students about FIRST. I was doing some research and I found that although there are docs and certain guides for learning it isn’t too condensed. Also an important part about education I’ve learned throughout my time is that project based learning is really valuable compared to just theory. Because of this I wanted to create a one stop shop for educating members on software, design, electricals, and manufacturing that also includ fun but practical projects to help everyone in the community learn. I would really appreciate any thoughts or ideas you may have and if you would be interested to help me create it? Thank you!
If you are interested in contributing or adding more content to any of the existing documentation docs.wpilib.org (FRC-docs) is open source, my website frcZero.org also allows anyone to add content through our GitHub. Both websites are exactly what you are describing, but with cross purposes. FRC-docs is very specific to the control system components. I.e. how to wire it, do some basic controls and get something working for rookies. It is rather high level and does not go in depth or into “projects” that reinforce the content. That isn’t it’s purpose. That site is meant to be the barebones of what every team needs to do at a minimum.
FrcZero avoids most of the content FRC-docs already covers or links to the existing sources where possible. The CAD, marketing, safety, all of the other sections are things not in the scope of FRC-docs at all. I’m always looking for more people to help write content so if you are interested definitely let me know!
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The docs and FrcZero are great resources I looked into but it wasn’t the idea I was going for. It’s kind of a mix between a khan academy and PLTW course. For those who haven’t used the PLTW site it basically walks you through learning different AP courses with projects and for me was really helpful compared to just content which is what the FRC docs is. And then I really like the khan academy video based learning and interactivity which is what I want to implement in my site.
You can add that to both existing resources. That’s what I meant for frcZero at least. You can add whatever content you like into an already existing resource. Both are open source and modifiable. The theme that frcZero was built around Learn Theme for Hugo :: Documentation for Hugo Learn Theme is designed to allow you to mimic the idea of Slides but you can put whatever you want on a page. If you have a video, a little drop in JavaScript widget for a drag and drop matching game, etc you can embed those on the page.
With both systems being open source you could add a system like you are describing as a new section with its own way of interacting. Even a totally different layout is doable on seperate pages. You don’t have to create another website from scratch, host it, buy a domain, etc was the point.
You get to make whatever content you’d like interactive or not. I’m just offering somewhere to put it that has a framework that supports it. I don’t get to speak for FRC-docs cuz I’m not involved there but frcZero is an open playground and I’m willing to always try new things!
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This is good information. All good ideas can be “boxed” - you should clearly be able to indicate what’s in scope for the idea, as well as what’s out of scope.
In turn, this helps you figure out where your idea fits into the landscape of existing resources.
I think having more tutorial-like, guided, video-focused content is good. It’ll hit some folks where they prefer learning more. I think your biggest challenge will be finding balance between conflicting requirements. “Specific” will generally conflict with “applicable to any team” and “easy to keep up to date year to year”. The difficulty of balancing this is why I think a lot of the existing resources aren’t formatted like you described.
If you haven’t seen it yet, The Zero to Autonomous video series could be good inspiration to draw from.
100% there won’t be a one stop shop for every team but it can still be a helpful resource and I think video focused content can help balance between conflicting requirements.
Zero to Autonomous was a really big inspiration for this because I remember when I first joined my team it was small and we only had one experienced software member but I could watch those videos on my own and learned quite a bit from it. My main goal is really for teams to use this either as their main education platform or a piece of it because video styled courses help students get the content while the projects help them implement and get comfortable. This appeals to students who only want the learning from the videos and those who only want the experience from the projects…
And especially for rookie teams or students with zero knowledge. There is a team next to us who started FRC this year and are having a hard time figuring out if they will get a kitbot next year because there is still a large jump between a kitbot to building your own bot. This platform would help those types of teams spend 1-2 offseasons learning and then be comfortable enough to build their own bot.
I want this to be something the community contributes to because people can help create content which can also help their own teams but also in FRC I’m more on the electrical side of things so I would really love other members of the community to help me create content for the software, design, and manufacturing side. I know big teams have their own education systems to make sure newer members are being educated via meetings and projects but this would help teams who aren’t at that level yet still get the content and experience.
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