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The Vex robotics kit (from IFI, the folks behind First Robotics) is geared towards what you're talking about.

It can even be programmed visually, in "Easy-C". This lets people drag and drop into a visual editor, essentially making a flow chart. It displays the generated C code.

When you tire of that, you can program it in C using the MPLAB compiler (and possibly others).

I, too, would recommend First Robotics (www.usfirst.org) as well as the Best robotics competition, which has a lower cost of entry, but no programming to my knowledge. http://www.bestinc.org/

ttyl,

--buddy

Well Im a few years out of high school, but while I was there I did FIRST all four years, FIRST is the largest national robotics competition for high school students, and was some of the most fun I have had in my entire life. It does require a large commitment of time and resources, so it might not be for you. I went to several programming competitions run by varous state colleges and the like, and generally found them pretty boring.
The most important thing is building a relationship with teachers that are interested in whatever it is you decide to do. You might want to check around to find out if there is a school where what you have to offer will be most appreciated. For example, I went to a Magnet program for "Emerging COmputer Technology" that drew students actually interested in the feild (and willing to make sacrifices of convenience) from across the county. Lots of school systems have similiar programs, and such concentrations of interested students will make your life easier. Some schools now offer Cisco Network Academy courses and such, they might be a good place to start, invite them to tour your workplace and see a full scale deployment in action (this only works if you have a network worth showing off, but you get the idea). This will get you started towards building a relationship with the school.
If you decide to do some sort of competition, it will serve you well to make sure the students are self-selecting and want to be there for reasons beyond getting out of school for the day. Students will take any excuse for a feild trip, and once they arrive and are bored to tears they will not only learn anything but generally be disruptive. High school students will always, always act up when bored. Also, whatever task or challenge you set before them will take at least 3x longer then if you set a group of adults to do it, and that number goes up the larger the group.

If you are just interested in helping out however you can, almost all schools could benefit from professional IT help, and many programming classes are taught be reassigned math teachers who would probably welcome a guest instructor or such for the day.
Some links to get you started:
http://www.usfirst.org/
A very large and well respected robotics competition, all levels of contruction from screwed togethor wood bots to CNC precision engineered masterpieces sponsored by Fortune 500 companies. A 6 week intensive build period and my require considerable travel to competitions.
http://www.bestinc.org/
Another robotics competition, lacks the budget and professionalism of FIRST. Robots are generally poorly contructed and must be made entirely of components provided. Much lower entry cost then FIRST.
url:http://www.battlebotsiq.com/
A high-school off shoot of Battlebots, I have not competed in this and don't know much about it.

KISS and BEST are two other nationally-recognized robotics programs. While KISS uses Legos, don't be fooled -- you have two embedded systems to work with (Lego's RCX and the MIT-developed Handy Board microcontroller), and the designs get pretty outrageous. BEST has students building robots from scratch.

Or if the school is smaller, then a BEST Robotics team. http://www.bestinc.org/MVC/

Our Team was 4th place in the Southwest region this year behind a Homeschool team 1 team from the same hub as the homeschool team (allied) and another team that won with luck.

I'm not all too concerned with the practicality of the math that I learn though... Just learning things that are challenging and trying to beat everyone else is fun :)

They may be BEST but they're not FIRST

It appears "BEST" and "FIRST" have been around for roughly the same amount of time, but I hadn't heard of "BEST" until now either.

Rather than limiting the kids to the materials supplied in the (incredibly expensive) kits, I would prefer seeing something where the bare minimum was provided by FIRST and the majority of parts were to be found at Home Depot/Digikey by the kids themselves. I think this would limit the price somewhat, would allow the kids to spend more time on design, building and experimenting (which is what FIRST should be all about anyway).

My high school participates in BEST (specifically, the San Antonio hub), which seems to be similar-- except FIRST actually seems to involve some programming (BEST robots are basically controlled not unlike how an RC car would be controlled).

Nonetheless, these programs are a great way to teach hands-on engineering to students.

The process for competition works like this: one "hub" (local competition area) is given the task of making a game for the year. Then it's released at synchronized kick-off meetings to all teams. From that date, you've got 6 weeks until local competition. If you place in that (either by placing in the competition or the BEST award), you advance to state/nationals (it's still basically state because most of the hubs are in Texas, but some are as far away as Chicago).

For reference, I'm on the Medina Valley High School Robotics team. Click on MV Robotics at the top, and don't believe everything (anything) you read on the schools front page except for the part about the corn :)

Note: Kickoff for next year's competition is scheduled for early October I believe. I also apologize for our website - our school district gave us some real hassle about it so we never had a chance to truly refine it.

CAP THAT KARMA!
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