Dear Students,
I would like to welcome you to the Flowing Wells Robotics Team. We are a hard working group committed to solving problems for the future. You may see us around campus driving a Robot or hear about us through the announcements or even the club website. We will be meeting in S2 this year and it would be great if you could stop by.
This year, we will be rebuilding the robotics team due to some unforeseeable circumstances. I would like to lay the foundation of a hard working, focused, and motivated team. We need team members who are genuinely interested in learning and doing! The learning environment is mostly hands on with some structured learning through presentation and worksheets.
The first few months of the fall program will be devoted to outreach at the districts local elementary and junior high schools. It is of utmost importance to start the program being focused in helping the community. This year, I will encourage team members to apply for the Chairman’s award which is the most prestigious award a team can win at the FIRST Robotics Competition. I will also supply a wealth of information for web design and development to win a second Website award for this year.
The next few months will be devoted to learning specific objectives pertaining to Robotics. I will be developing curriculum for a possible robotics course and I may even write a book about this stuff! During mid October through December the Team will be learning: mechanical design, drafting, electrical wiring, networking, programming, shop safety, etc. We will experiment with various robotics ideas and there may be a few surprises along the way (hint).
Robotics Team members have been notorious for working hard and playing hard. We will maintain this idea in our next year, but I am changing the rules. The team will have dedicated hours for work and for play. When it is time to work, team members will be on-task, focused, and progressive in a task. If one is not motivated to work or on task, I will simply ask them to not attend because I do not want distractions taking away from other students learning. When it is time to play, I will let students choose an activity for which the team can go to a “social event” and not work, but play. This may entail: Funtastics, Rocks and Ropes, Columbus park (soccer and launching rockets), or a pizza party in S6 with some Wii competitions. I am open to other suggestions as we want to keep morale high and have fun!
The takeaway of the Robotics Team is to invest time in your future. We are interested in helping students pursue technology, science, and engineering. The FIRST Robotics program has thousands of companies providing millions of dollars for scholarship money. I would love to help the Team members with applying to these scholarships and help further your success as a student.
Go Robo Knights!
Michael Palmer