<p>Anyone else involved in this with their HS kid? My HS freshman joined his HS’s robotics team in the fall and has really enjoyed it. In an intense six week period the team builds a robot that has to perform certain maneuvers. This year’s robots had to be able to pick up a ball about 4 feet in diameter and place it on a set of bars and/or launch it over the bars and move around a course rapidly. They do this with five other robots on a small course.</p>
<p>I like the team because it’s very inclusive and competitive without being over the top. Yesterday was the Philadelphia regional at Drexel and my son’s team came in second place. We felt pretty proud of them since our schools budget is fairly small compared to some other teams and our school is smaller then most of the others too. Anyway, it was a fun day and I was just wondering if any of you other CC’ers were there??</p>
<p>Congratulations to you son’s team! DS was a member of his HS team and loved it. It’s a wonderful way for kids to gain both technical and team experience. Son is now a second year mechanical engineering student, his HS robotics work helped him clarify what techy field he wanted to pursue.
The Boston Regional is so much fun, I love seeing thousands of spirited HS students in costumes cheering and working together on their robots.<br>
Even though I no longer have a student at this event I still go to cheer them all on.</p>
<p>My son was on two FIRST Robotics teams. The second team he started and fundraised for; they ended up regional winners their first year. I believe that experience is probably why MIT accepted him (at least a good chunk of it). It’s a wonderful program, isn’t it?</p>
<p>Yes, S, a HS freshman, joined his school’s team. I had NO idea that when he joined, it meant his parents (read: mom) were joining, too. Oy!</p>
<p>I am very very glad he is involved with it. That said, there are some things I don’t like about this particular implementation of a robotics club. (His school for 5th-7th had a robotics club, too, which he really enjoyed.) The school’s club had been very active, then lost their primary faculty supporter/mentor, so the club had died. This year’s team is essentially a rookie team as a result. The (new) school principal is behind the team 1000% and has been great at getting resources for the team. </p>
<p>Still, the attrition rate has been very high, and I think that has been in part because of the expectations of the parent/mentor driving the team’s participation in FIRST. Nothing against FIRST, but this guy was asking WAY too much of the rookie team and has turned off a lot of students. And parents, too. He has a good heart and has worked incredibly hard to make things work, but I think it was too much too soon for this particular team.</p>
<p>I hope my son continues to be involved, while also hoping that drastic changes are made in the club to make it an activity that is much more kid-centered and much less driven by adults’ competitive wishes.</p>
<p>My older S founded his school’s FIRST Robotics team with 2 friends. They earned the Team Spirit and Rookie All-Star Team awards their first year, and won or placed in a couple Regionals and went to Nationals in his senior year. My younger S joined a couple years later. I was a Team Mom, and served as a mentor for the Publicity sub-committee.</p>
<p>FIRST is one of the best things my kids got involved in during their high school careers. A FIRST team can be driven too hard by parents or mentors and it can turn into something not-so-great. But when the kids band together to make it happen, and are supported (and not driven) by the adults involved, it can be an amazing and very positive experience.</p>
<p>(And PS, I agree with dmd77 that serious and sustained involvement with a FIRST team cannot possibly hurt in MIT admissions. My older S is there now.)</p>
<p>FIRST was also a great experience for my S, who did it for three years during high school and is now a soph at MIT. It did cause some time management issues (balancing schoolwork and robotics) during the intense 6-week contest period, but that’s behind us now.</p>
<p>S didn’t do FIRST Lego League (ages 9-14), but did enjoy constructing things on his own with the Lego Mindstorms kit we purchased for him (including one day when he set up a webcam with tilt and pan control in our home computer room, then spied on us from his school’s computer lab–we noticed the camera moving). I recommend it highly to any parents of preteens out there.
[LEGO.com</a> MINDSTORMS NXT Home](<a href=“http://mindstorms.lego.com/]LEGO.com”>http://mindstorms.lego.com/)</p>
<p>The tournament that my son attended was a FIRST event. One of the things I have found odd is the over-involvement of the mentors. In our school these are not just parents, but parents of kids that have graduated and a couple of guys from the local company that is a major sponsor. I noticed at the awards last night that on some teams there seemed to be as many adults as kids. My son was previously involved in Odyssey of the Mind and I very much liked the student led competition aspect. </p>
<p>I think the Scholarship amount to FIRST robotics team members that was mentioned yesterday was something like 9 million dollars. Many, colleges were mentioned as giving scholarships and not all for engineering majors, which was good to know.</p>
<p>kathiep, the adult involvement is something our local school district does not like. They joined a countywide robotics group that doesn’t allow adult help. However, I really think that the FIRST program is so much better. Heck, teachers are constantly telling students that it’s so important to work as a group … and last time I checked, “groups” in the real world of work involve folks of all skill levels & ages. As long as the mentors are mentoring (not doing it themselves), I don’t see a problem.</p>
<p>The scholarship money for FIRST is fantastic!! There are so many schools that are affordable because of these scholarships. A young woman at my church went to Kettering University with a full tuition FIRST scholarship (she studied management, not engineering). She was able to use her co-op earnings for room/board & came out ahead. </p>
<p>I sure wish my son would do robotics. Alas, he considers himself too cool for that (if you knew him, you’d laugh at that - he’s kind of a computer geek!).</p>
<p>kelsmom, you might want to let him know that robotics teams need programmers. This is the first time, the mentors said, that they had worked with a team that had more than one (very reluctant) programmer on it. All of the programmers on my son’s team were very enthusiastic about programming the robot; there wasn’t nearly enough work to go around to all the kids on that team! These teams also need one or more website designers. </p>
<p>FIRST robotics teams can also benefit from having management/business type kids on them, to manage the fundraising and communications activities, something in which some (many/most) of the robotics/engineering/programming kids don’t necessarily excel.</p>
<p>My son is a senior and captain of his FIRST team this year; he’s done it all 4 years and did Lego League and Vex as well. FIRST teams do need all kinds of skills beyond traditional engineering. They do CAD drawings and 3-D Studio Max animation, so actually computer graphics kids also can find their niche. </p>
<p>The role of mentors on the teams is endlessly debated among FIRST kids. There are reportedly some teams that essentially have professional engineers design and build their robots, receiving them a week or so before the competition so they can learn to drive them. And there are other teams that pride themselves on being student-led, student-built. My son’s team claims to be the latter and to a large degree it is, but sometimes it is hard for the adult mentors to remember their role. </p>
<p>The scholarship money can be quite generous; we had a team member 4 years ago who received full tuition to Northeastern. WPI also has a few full-tuition scholarships and also actively mentors a local team, so involvement with FIRST might continue even after high school.</p>
<p>We are all looking forward to the Atlanta competition in a few weeks–good luck to all who will be participating!</p>
<p>My son went to his principal last year and he hired someone to lead it. This teacher/sponsor believes in students led-driven and as much as they can do. We have one engineer, one physics teacher and one in to it Dad on top of my husband with fourteen boys. They won the all star rookie award in St Louis and are heading to Atlanta in two weeks!
This has been an amazing opportunity for my son who, besides loving the robotics and competition, learned how to work with a group and leadership. His personal growth from this experience has been immense.
He is a senior and it changed where he wanted to go to college. He wants to stay involved with FIRST and even though he got accepted almost everywhere, he only wants to go where he can help a FIRST team.</p>