Does anyone know of high schools that offer a robotics class as an elective? Our school has had one for about five years. We build a bot for FRC and do various other projects throughout the year. We were talking in class yesterday and could not think of any other schools in our area that offered a robotics class.
Our school, Montgomery High School, offers a variety of engineering courses. Robotics being one of them.
Here are some other threads with the same/a similar topic that you might want to check out:
But we also started a robotics elective (one marking period long) in our middle school that deals with the history and different aspects of robotics. The course is more of an “Intro to Robotics” course, and generates an interest for science and technology in the students who take the class, who will hopefully then be recruited for our FRC team upon entering high school.
We’re not in your area, but my class is in its 4th year, centered around FRC of course. It’s becoming more popular in schools, primarily because of teachers involved with FIRST and carrying that message to school boards. Out here in NorCal many high schools have an Academic Decathalon elective class, so it seemed easy to then have a robotics class centered around a competition - unfortunately Academic Decathalon is much cheaper to run and we now fight over the students we recruit (something you don’t usually consider in schools these days - but a neat trend).
I’ve been in Robotics class for an elective the past couple years but not this year because they put it on hold. but yeah our school had robotics as an elective.
I know that 437(richardson robotics) has a robotics class . . 2 last time I heard . .
Team 1138’s home, Chaminade College Preparatory, has a Robotics class. It’s most C programming on the VEX Platform. The semester project though requires more mechanical design in building a robot to design a certain task.
There are already numerous threads about this, but I do know of several teams. 111 has a class at both of their schools I beleive.
Fairfax County has an “academy” system in which certain schools can draw students from other schools for specialized classes (such as law enforcement, dance, animal sciences, advanced technical theatre, Korean language, etc.). The Chantilly Academy (Technology and Human Services) has several classes associated with Engineering and Robotics (and Team 612), including Engineering Systems I and II, Electronics, and Engineering Physics.
I think Carl Hayden has one of the best. That is my opinion because Carl Hayden beat MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and thats a $@#$@#$@#$@# good school MIT has the best computer classes you can take!
Bellarmine College Prep has a robotics class.
Lower Merion High School has a 1 semester robotics elective that’s based off of VEX, which basically allows us to have our own in-house vex competitions and recruit those who are really interested to be on our vex team or FRC team. I also think that our programing classes are starting to use vex systems to test out code in real world situations.
Our high school has several Project lead the way classes, which are sort of like robotics classes for us because most students on our robotics team take at least one of them.
Hauppauge runs a couple of elective robotics classes.
5 or 6 years of them.
Just to highlight it a bit more; Team 612 mainly operate as a class orientated team, although everyone can join the team.
Engineering Systems 1 & 2 : mainly provides the leadership team and the sub-team captains
Engineering Physics : All the mechanical and electrical members
Industry/Tech Drawing : As the name suggests, AutoCad team and animation
Web Developing: Website obviously.
Most of our members are actually from those classes. Teachers recruit in-class students and help them looking at the practical application of what they learn inside a class.
My high school, Lindbergh High School in Renton, WA had a robotics and an advanced robotics class. The teachers responsible used to have a FIRST team (before I went to school there) but their primary sponsorship through boeing dissolved with some management changes and they haven’t done it since. They do a lot of fun mini competitions and a large regional tethered competition in the spring. (4’x8’ arena, 1ft cube robots, different game each year). The competition usually pulls in around 100 teams of 3 people each. The second class does more electronics and autonomous programming, but they still compete in the spring.
Corry High offers an intro and advanced robotics class, it is really convenient because it is during build season 
Wildstang began it’s 9th period class (after school credit classes) after several students petitioned the school board in 1997-98. The board agreed and approved the class if a curriculum could be formed and listed out as do regular classes. Students do receive grades and must maintain grades in all classes to stay on the team. Participation does affect GPA.
McKee High School, Team 522, home of the 2006 World Champion Robo Wizards has had a Robotics course structured after FIRST for over 3 years. It is a hands on class designed so that the students who work in teams are given a set of problems that they need to solve, then they are given a certain amount of time with material and tools provided, to fabricate a structure based on physics and sound engineering principles and perform a certain set of tasks all done in a timed environment. Mckee also boasts of having the only full working state of the art machine shop in all of the NYC high schools. The teams of students compete against each other in their respective classes and then there is a run-off competition between the winners of both Robotics classes. They also vie for prizes. The classes meet one period a day five days a week from September thru June. Robotics class students also have the option of joining the Robotics team. The whole idea came from the fact that the students did not learn enough about Robotics, just attending team meetings one hour a week. The classes are taught by the same people that run the Robotics team. It has been a hugely successful endeavor on the part of the teachers and administrators at McKee. The teachers and staff have also written an entire Robotics curricula that the school is trying to implement for all public high schools throughout New York City. McKee Vocational High school is located on Staten Island, New York.
Team 842 Falcon Robotics has had a robotics class for about 5 years.
Churchville-Chili High School just got a robotics class this year. The course itself is called “Intro to Robotics”. Throughout the year us students will work with Fisher Techniks, VEX, and FRC, as well as other stuff. Our teacher (2006 FLR Woodie Flowers Award Winner) Jason Rees teaches the class. As always, if the class isn’t awesome in itself, is so much better with Rees as our teacher.