You will be dearly Missed out at TI, where I caught a passing glance of you. It is out there where your legacy will live on forever. The posters and banners displaying your legacy will always be there. No one knows what will become of your office where you encouraged so many young engineers. But I can only hope that something good will become of it.
As one who is madly in love with robotics (having almost taken the robot to a school dance... no joke... ) I am inclined to agree. Yes, the robotics teams are not as large as the sports teams, but from my experiance they are a sizeable bit of the school's population.
The robotics team, however also has to promote robotics as something that is not geeky. We have girls who joined this year who last year wouldnt have walked near the lab. I go to an all girls school, and have over 20 people on the team. a good 10% of the school's high school population. Also, the rest of the population knows who we are. They think what we do is amazing and "wish they were smart enough to do it. " I keep trying to make the point, and finally started to get through to a few, that you dont have to be smart to do robotics. You just need to be creative. You need to think outside of the box and be able to problemsolve whent things go wrong. Our brother school has a huge team also. A lot of people want to be on their team, but do not have the time.
What I lose people to is lack of time. NOT lack of intest. I also lose people due to lack of funding. We only have the funding to do one big competion a year, BEST (seen on here earlier this year) since it is paid for by TI and Raytheon.
Put a highschooler with power tools and they will have an awsome time.
Finally, Robotics gives you an amazing feeling, you see something you made go around. You never realize that you can create something like that. You see the design process in action. You also get so many things going at once, with design, fabrication and testing, its hard to be bored.
As a current BEST team member (4th and final year sadly) BEST revolves little around "real" science. They just use it to base a story off of. BEST is awesome because unlike FIRST, there is no cost teams. I know in Dallas BEST Texas Instruments pays for it. Other places, I don't know who pays. BEST gives you a box of parts, and says have fun, complete this task, and you have 6 weeks. It gives you awesome experience. You learn the applications of building things, not just theory. (such as the limit switch issue we are having now theory went to heck about three days ago.)
If you want to see our BEST bot (note: we've got two weeks left, its not done yet!) Here she is We are one of two all girls teams in Dallas BEST.
I agree that the highschools are a point where girls are discrouaged from going into tech feilds. I go to an all girl school, 113 in a grade. Of that.. I think I am the only one who is going to be an Engineer. And they say they are empowering us? HA. I am probaly the only one aplying to schools that contain the phrase "Institue of Technology" in the name.
I know some parents are still stuck in the past too. You always see little boys on TV playing with the race cars and legos. Where are the girls? I always wanted them but was told "girls dont play with that". Bull. Between parents, schools and the public, girls are being pushed away from technical jobs of all typed because its not seen as aceptable in socitey. If they are not acepted in society they see this as highly taboo, and they just want to fit in and be a sheep. We dont need sheep, but if they insist on being one at least be a plaid sheep.
If society would give up the gender sterotyping which is so prevolent, then the gender balance would probly become closer to par.
It is odd that women are few in the tech feilds when they are a majority of the population. (51%). They also get paid less still today, 72 cents for each dollar a man gets, yet people think sex discrimination is non exsistant....
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You will be dearly Missed out at TI, where I caught a passing glance of you. It is out there where your legacy will live on forever. The posters and banners displaying your legacy will always be there. No one knows what will become of your office where you encouraged so many young engineers. But I can only hope that something good will become of it.
As one who is madly in love with robotics (having almost taken the robot to a school dance... no joke... ) I am inclined to agree. Yes, the robotics teams are not as large as the sports teams, but from my experiance they are a sizeable bit of the school's population. The robotics team, however also has to promote robotics as something that is not geeky. We have girls who joined this year who last year wouldnt have walked near the lab. I go to an all girls school, and have over 20 people on the team. a good 10% of the school's high school population. Also, the rest of the population knows who we are. They think what we do is amazing and "wish they were smart enough to do it. " I keep trying to make the point, and finally started to get through to a few, that you dont have to be smart to do robotics. You just need to be creative. You need to think outside of the box and be able to problemsolve whent things go wrong. Our brother school has a huge team also. A lot of people want to be on their team, but do not have the time. What I lose people to is lack of time. NOT lack of intest. I also lose people due to lack of funding. We only have the funding to do one big competion a year, BEST (seen on here earlier this year) since it is paid for by TI and Raytheon. Put a highschooler with power tools and they will have an awsome time. Finally, Robotics gives you an amazing feeling, you see something you made go around. You never realize that you can create something like that. You see the design process in action. You also get so many things going at once, with design, fabrication and testing, its hard to be bored.
Different Hubs Different Kick offs. Dallas didnt kick off till the 18th.
As a current BEST team member (4th and final year sadly) BEST revolves little around "real" science. They just use it to base a story off of. BEST is awesome because unlike FIRST, there is no cost teams. I know in Dallas BEST Texas Instruments pays for it. Other places, I don't know who pays. BEST gives you a box of parts, and says have fun, complete this task, and you have 6 weeks. It gives you awesome experience. You learn the applications of building things, not just theory. (such as the limit switch issue we are having now theory went to heck about three days ago.)
If you want to see our BEST bot (note: we've got two weeks left, its not done yet!) Here she is We are one of two all girls teams in Dallas BEST.
I agree that the highschools are a point where girls are discrouaged from going into tech feilds. I go to an all girl school, 113 in a grade. Of that.. I think I am the only one who is going to be an Engineer. And they say they are empowering us? HA. I am probaly the only one aplying to schools that contain the phrase "Institue of Technology" in the name. I know some parents are still stuck in the past too. You always see little boys on TV playing with the race cars and legos. Where are the girls? I always wanted them but was told "girls dont play with that". Bull. Between parents, schools and the public, girls are being pushed away from technical jobs of all typed because its not seen as aceptable in socitey. If they are not acepted in society they see this as highly taboo, and they just want to fit in and be a sheep. We dont need sheep, but if they insist on being one at least be a plaid sheep. If society would give up the gender sterotyping which is so prevolent, then the gender balance would probly become closer to par. It is odd that women are few in the tech feilds when they are a majority of the population. (51%). They also get paid less still today, 72 cents for each dollar a man gets, yet people think sex discrimination is non exsistant....