FIRST Design Competition
Numerous design competitions have appeared on the educational
landscape in recent years. In Movie 1, you can hear MIT's
Woodie Flowers, teachers and students talk out about the
annual design competition called FIRST. This event, started
and funded by inventor/designer Dean Kaman, involves thousands
of high school students who, with the after-school help
of teachers and local-industry-based engineers, design
and build robots in preparation for regional and national
competitions.
FIRST students are highly motivated, and get to experience
a challenging project being brought to completion with
a tight deadline. Students learn a "can-do" attitude
- a priceless commodity for future work in college and
the workplace. Teachers also benefit from working with
engineers and seeing the design/production system at
work in bringing ideas to fruition in 6 short weeks
of intensive work.
In 2004, 975 teams participated in FIRST's regional
competitions, with 290 moving on to the finals which
in that year was held in Atlanta, GA. A Lego-based version
of this competition is available for middle-school students,
which also culminates in a national finals competition.
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