Thank you to everyone who completed the February survey! Here are some of the comments we received from survey participants
- Right now, our students come up with the initial ideas, the mentors base a design (CAD model) around that, and then the students build the bot. Programming is harder to say. We have very few students interested in it and it seems like there are not very many resources (or at least easily understandable or accessible ones) for programming
- Our biggest goals on our team is that we are a student lead team. – Chloe Leaman, Team 5603
- I wholly believe that the students are the focus, and when they learn, we all win, regardless of how well the robot performs. When you take away either designing, building and/or programming, what then is the point of the organization? I’ve been in this for many years and I still am because of what the students get out of this program, not for trophies and accolades. – John Pyeatt, Team 1828
- Keep up the good work! – Mark Rocheleau, Team 1277
- Some teams coaches and mentors have to do more hands on work due to limited resources. – Van Hill, Team 7768
- As our team’s lead mentor, I’m (perhaps comically) proud to say my students know SO much more about robotics than I do. I just lead in a supporting role and just try to make the “behind the scenes” work (food orders, school finances, travel, etc.) are handled so they can focus on what they do best (which is designing and building robots!). While my lack of expertise might put our team at a disadvantage competitively, it means that our team is able to be truly student-led. And our industry mentors are also really good about supporting with questions/advice without actually doing it for them (and if they weren’t I’d address it!).
- I am exhausted from having to play against adults. it’s such a farce. All the student built robots don’t stand a chance against a professionally designed and built robot. It makes me sick.