Our Teacher is interested in introducing FIRST as a course in the High School Curriculum. Are there any teams that currently have this?
We are looking for contacts that would be willing to provide us the curriculum documentation used for a high school course based around FIRST. If anyone has any information for us, please post or PM or email me. Thanks!
Additionally if you know of any teams that currently have a High School course, please let us know.
On team 93 we have a class, for high school credit, that meets every Tuesday and Thursday after school from 3:15 till about 4:15. And then during the build we have to be there so many hours a week to get the credit that semester.
As far as local Rochester teams, 1405 (Charles Finney school) started a robotics class this year, with FIRST as one of the cornerstones. You should talk to Jane Schantz there for more information.
We don’t have a FIRST class in our school persay. but we have a class on robotics that is taught by one of our advisors. And many of the kids in the class end up working on the robot who arent on the team. Although if you are on the team you arent required to take the class…we have a meeting this evening. maybe i can get some info for you on what the curriculum of the class is
Team 701 started a class in Jan, 2003. It is simply offered for credit and fulfills the VocEd requirement for graduation. I tried to get it approved as a College Prep class through University of California - but was declined. With more time, I can re-work the curriculum some more and hope to get it approved. We average about 8-10 students enrolled, another 4-6 show up most days and sit in on the class.
I’ll attach the curriculum outline that I wrote for UC Course Approval. It is very ambitious - I only get through maybe 60% of what is in there. Of course if it ever gets approved as a UC college prep class - I will have to get through it all.
The bad news is that our course is in jeopardy, because of district cutbacks. Hopefully I get 30 students to sign up for next year so they can’t cancel it (although that presents another host of problems with so many students - but I prefer that than losing the class)
Team #399 has a robotics class, or at least did two years ago - since the instructor took another (very cool and exciting) job with NASA, I’m not sure if they were able to find another instructor for that course or not. This group has been fantastic helping other teams and I’m sure they would be very happy to talk about their robotics course with anyone who wanted to know - even if they don’t still have it they still have the information on it. These guys are very organized and I’m sure they kept documentation in their archives. I’ll check with Carol tomorrow to see for sure what the status is and post again.
Also Pocatello High School has a robotics class - they are a rookie team this year, one of only two in Idaho this year - I expect this team will be amazing this year! They’ve been working on becoming a FIRST team for quite a while - a lot of thought and planning was put into starting up this team and they have support from Idaho State University. Keep an eye on this team! I’m very excited they were able to become a FIRST team this year!
Roy High School, in Utah, was asked by their district to put together a plan for a robotics class next year. The instructor wanted my help with it, but I have no expertise in the area of educational plans and other ‘stuff’ that you’ve got to do when you’re a teacher so I’ll be watching this thread quite a bit and checking the white papers for curiculum ideas and other interesting tidbits. I’ll also be talking to all the teams that currently have this kind of course offered at their high schools. I’m so happy to have a place to come to that we can find information like this. What a GREAT WEBSITE!
Try this link <http://www.aasd.k12.wi.us/tesla/> They have a complete Charter School with FRC as a corner stone. Best of luck from Middletown Robotics FRC-1370
I am in Tesla. It is a lot of fun. Right now as I senior I am in a class were we get to do projects all year. We select the project, research it, design it, and then build it. It gives you the freedom that alot of classes will not and it counts as 3 credits. It’s called the Tesla Engineering Charter School.
Our high school has four engineering design courses based on FIRST. I know that my team’s advisor, our school’s technology teacher, has aided other teams in starting up such courses at their schools and am positive that he’d love to help. If you haven’t already gotten enough help from everyone yet, please send me a PM and I’ll give you his personal contact information. Good luck!
It looks like we wont be able to start a class next year, as the teachers already had to submit, but hopefully for the 2006-2007 year we can get something going!
You might also want to look up Team 22 out of LA, which has for a long time operated under the leadership of UFH17 Wendy Wooten. From what I understand, they have one of the most successful high school course FIRST teams out there right now.
Delphi E.L.I.T.E. has both engineering drawing courses and a FIRST class.
The FIRST class is a requirement to be on the team and the engineers that we have come in and teach the basics of designing, building, and understanding the robot. This year we tried something different and had each of our sub teams take a class pertaining to what they would be doing that year. ex. A/V Photo had classes on how to capture and edit both pictures and video, and also how to create images.
our advisor would probably be able to help you out more.
Send him an e-mail at [email protected]
It seems like a good FIRST/Engineering class might have different supporting modules. Maybe a section for CAD, a section on programming, a section on electrical, and a section on mobility and functionality devices. I think this would be good, then let the students used what they have learned to package it all up in a robot in January. I would teach the elements before hand, but hold off on the actual robot building until January. For each section of this class, I would give some good instruction to get them moving along but not enough instruction to where they master it. After the formal instruction period, I would assign them a final project (preferably in teams) that builds on the skills they have learned. Make the project seem like it requires more skill than they have, and make it require techniques they don’t know how to do. With the basic instruction from the teacher, then independent exploration by the students (with assistance from teacher as needed), the students are sure to learn a great deal and the whole program will be a giant success.
Most of all, in any class of the sort, it needs three things, challenge, competition, hands on experience. I would also say fun, but that is a given.
The real question is whether you just want credit for a class, to have class time to learn skill, or to get credit for something you’re doing anyway?