I think that your answer will vary by coach. My feeling is that the team
needs to build the robot each year unless they have kept the exact team
members. They can build on what they have personally done in the past, but
they may NOT pick up and use someone else's design any more than they may
pick up and use someone else's code. On our team, that would be considered
cheating.

Obviously there are teams and coaches who disagree with that, but I have
not been able to reconcile anything else with the "kid's do the work" rule.

I think that our team members who have stayed in for multiple years have
far more ability to build and diagnose a problem than the kids on teams
where the design is handed to them and they don't have to struggle through
it. We have rarely won awards at state, but when we have, the kids know
that it was ALL, start to finish, work that they accomplished, with their
own skill. Since we don't have any programmer/engineer coaches, we've
learned together. The kids passed my paltry skill years ago!

In the end, I think that learning to struggle through a challenge on your
own is a primary skill that I want my team members to learn.

Heather Quintero
Technical Difficulties


On Sep 14, 2014, at 11:59 PM, Frank Levine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi all,
  I was wondering where the line is between 'kids do the work' vs 'starter
robot' is?  I have seen several suggestions (both here and on the
interwebs) that this/that robot is a great robot for rookies, etc.  While
my team has been trying to make a decent robot from scratch, I have taken
many of the suggestions that I have seen from the internet and made what I
think is a decent driving base.  Is it appropriate to hand that base over
to the rookies and let them go from there?  Will the judges frown on a
coach doing some of the initial legwork to get a base started?  What's the
difference between that and finding a starting base on-line?  Ideally I
would love to see them make it from scratch, but today's building session
has me thinking that this may be a bit of a stretch.

Thanks,
Frank Levine
"The Construction Mavericks"
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