School Association
The school administration has been a stout Gearheads supporter. In addition to the generous facilities described in the next section, the school pays a stipend for the team's teacher/sponsor, has assisted with upgrades to the CAD Lab, and strongly promotes the team within the school. The superintendent encouraged the team to present its credentials to the school board (with local television coverage) and has even referred us to the district's attorney for legal assistance (re: a copyright on the Gearhead logo which we are concerned could be pirated). Frankly, the Gearheads would like to achieve a level of community support comparable to what the schools and district have offered. To that end, one of the school principals is working with us to promote the team to parents specifically and to the community at large.
The Gearheads have access to the school shop which includes woodworking, welding and limited metalworking facilities. We have supplemented the shop with our own CNC-driven, 3-axis milling machine, metal lathe, and jewler's lathe last year. As a result of a remodeling project the school was able to allocate three additional rooms which, beginning this year, the team will use for storage, a computer and programming lab, and a testing/calibration workspace. Our school sponsor has been generous in providing access to the shop and to the school's CAD Lab after school and on weekends. (The CAD Lab can also be supervised by an adult mentor for additional hours.)
The mission statement of our high schools maintains that a school "...is committed to ensure that all...graduates demonstrate the knowledge, creativity and skills necessary to establish self-worth as independent, contributing members of society, prepared for life-long learning and success in a changing world." The Grosse Pointe Schools take particular care to provide learning opportunities tailored to each student's needs, in order to achieve this mission. The FIRST experience complements this overall mission, and is part of the tailored learning experience emphasized by the school system, so it is in synch with the schools' goals and means of achieving them. FIRST directly reinforces the opportunities the schools offer to prepare students for college and beyond. It allows for the knowledge acquired in class to be applied in very real scenarios that FIRST itself provides.
To cite a lighthearted example, our 2006 bot was named "Balzac", after an inquiry that could only gladden the heart of the Brit Lit teacher. More concrete instances of the dovetailing of curriculum and FIRST practices would include:
Physics: Effective bot design requires command of forces - mechanical, electrical, pneumatic and others.
Information Technology: FIRST generally, and the Gearheads in particular, employ computer applications extensively. These include CAD, CNC fabrication, databases, web design (PHP and HTML), communication and presentation software, spreadsheets, desktop publishing and word processing, decision-support software, graphics and photo manipulation, and C programming. The Gearheads received a Sportsmanship Award for Gearhead Crossing, an online database for tracking the performance of individual robots, compiled in real time at competitions and used for developing robot alliances. Future areas of interest include animation and video applications and web-based collaboration within and among FIRST teams.
Business Studies: Marketing and brand image are strongly emphasized by FIRST and the Gearheads have been recognized with an imagery award. In addition, budgeting, purchasing, and project management.
Engineering Graphics: The school offers classes in CAD and 3D design software. Our program takes this a step further; we are able to take files from CAD programs and use them to fabricate parts on our 3-axis milling machine.
Participation in FIRST Robotics helps students meet national standards in math, science and technology in two ways. 1.) Students draw from their theoretical 'textbook' knowledge to develop and test concepts for the robots. 2.) Then, they are able to test these concepts in real world situations where they design, fabricate and test their own components. Robotics allows them to test their knowledge and hypotheses directly and immediately.
