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Robotics For High School


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I would think so, I hope so. I was going to count my daughter's pre-engineering and robotics course as a science w/lab. They designed, built and programmed the things and did all sorts of experimenting and trouble-shooting to make sure they did what they wanted them to. 

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Absolutely. Put in enough hours for a credit.

 

Or join a team & it can be an all consuming extra curricular ;).

Like all. Their. Time.

All.

 

I gave Ds a credit for an engineering/ tech class for his hours spent studying engineering & coding on his own (he had a textbook, plus great courses sets- they have a robotics one), plus teaching himself online- he could've had several credits for this, time wise)

 

But for robotics teams (he does FTC plus an underwater ROV group too), that's an exacurricular for him, I don't even know how many hours a year.. Many Hundreds... Maybe over 1,000, hmm, about 20 hours a week year round

 

Eta- for transcript purposes, his robotics/ engineering course was an elective, not one of his core science classes with labs, he still has 4 of those as well.

Edited by Hilltopmom
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DD will have a credit each of biology, chemistry, and physics, all with labs, as well as a half credit of marine biology with a lab. I want to use the robotics course as a core science credit, not as an elective. Do you think this will be OK?

Absolutely. Put in enough hours for a credit.

 

Or join a team & it can be an all consuming extra curricular ;).

Like all. Their. Time.

All.

 

I gave Ds a credit for an engineering/ tech class for his hours spent studying engineering & coding on his own (he had a textbook, plus great courses sets- they have a robotics one), plus teaching himself online- he could've had several credits for this, time wise)

 

But for robotics teams (he does FTC plus an underwater ROV group too), that's an exacurricular for him, I don't even know how many hours a year.. Many Hundreds... Maybe over 1,000, hmm, about 20 hours a week year round

 

Eta- for transcript purposes, his robotics/ engineering course was an elective, not one of his core science classes with labs, he still has 4 of those as well.

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Not sure which colleges she's looking at, but the state schools we looked at all only wanted 3 years with lab, 4th year didn't have to have a lab.

When you write it up, list it under sciences (if you're divide that way), but specify "with lab".

 

To me, that would put her at 4.5 sciences "with lab" :)

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As a related question - can we discuss robotics options? We are in 4H robotics. DS loves. They are winning competitions. But is 4H looked down upon by college admissions? What other options are out there for homeschoolers? And the underwater ROV mentioned above. How to find something like that locally? I do know of an adult robotics club that welcomes teens and we will likely look into them at some point.

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I don't know how colleges view 4H robotics, so can't comment on that. My dds are in a FIRST FTC robotics team. Another home school mom and I started it for our kids and some other home schooled kids. It is really do-able for home schoolers. It's for grades 7-12, and is certainly challenging enough for high school kids but without the high cost of the FIRST FRC teams. 

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Our robotics team is a 4 H group, we do the FTC level, because FRC was way too expensive to fundraise for.

As it is, FTC costs thousands of dollars a year per team.

 

For the most part, if you want a team, you'll have to start your own, unless you happen to have one nearby, or can get on a school team.

 

Being a homeschool 4H team was great because we could work during the day when necessary & 4H was a way for access to insurances& non profit status needed to ask for donations from industry & civic groups.

 

The ROV group we also started ourselves, the dad who leads it is in that field but only has little kids, but offered to work with our teens (& does some little robots with the younger kids too).

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Not sure what you mean by how do colleges view 4H robotics?

 

4H is a pretty well known extracurricular.

 

I wouldn't put in on my kids transcript as a high school lab science course, but it's certainly a great extracurricular for all ages :)

 

By high school, if they are serious about robotics, I'd go for that already established adult team if you don't want to start your own

Edited by Hilltopmom
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Someone posted on the college board the other day about a comment a college official made re: 4H. It was already on my mind because of my own preconceived ideas of the org, but we joined this past year and I am finding it to be so different from my childhood experience. It made me wonder what the image of it was today. Relevant for today's tech world or dated ag group? We have really enjoyed our experience and our team! But I still don't know or understand how our competitions stack up. FTC and FRC are new acronyms to me. Will google.

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I gave 1/2 credit of "Robotics" each year for my son participated in FIRST FRC Robotics. He put in probably 400+ hours per year (5 hrs every Wednesday all year, plus another 20+ hrs every weekend during build and competition season, plus 3-5 travel weekends of 40+ hours . . . plus extra outreach events, etc.), and I have no qualms about the credits.  My daughter just joined the team, and I'll do the same for her. 

Edited by StephanieZ
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ps. Note that not all FIRST FRC teams are $$$$. Our local team (that is open to all sorts of schoolers including homeschoolers), that just won Chairman's at WORLD's and is now a Hall of Fame team . . . charges exactly $0 to team members. The only thing we pay for are meals when traveling and a few t-shirts. And help is readily available even for those minimal expenses upon request. We get sponsors to cover all those costs. Our area is too poor to require $$$ from kids . . . So we get sponsors instead. We have incredible mentors, so that's key, clearly. 

 

We are MARS -- MARS First Robotics, Morgantown, WV. <3 <3 <3 We are SO blessed to have this team!

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ps. Note that not all FIRST FRC teams are $$$$. Our local team (that is open to all sorts of schoolers including homeschoolers), that just won Chairman's at WORLD's and is now a Hall of Fame team . . . charges exactly $0 to team members. The only thing we pay for are meals when traveling and a few t-shirts. And help is readily available even for those minimal expenses upon request. We get sponsors to cover all those costs. Our area is too poor to require $$$ from kids . . . So we get sponsors instead. We have incredible mentors, so that's key, clearly.

 

We are MARS -- MARS First Robotics, Morgantown, WV. <3 <3 <3 We are SO blessed to have this team!

That's awesome.

The cost is "still" thousands of dollars, you are just able to get sponsors to cover it ;)

 

We fundraise. Have a few sponsors, but they're in the couple of hundred bucks range... Not a lot of industry here to try to get sponsorship from. And they're all hit up by every kids group in town to be sponsors.

We did win a grant for the last 2 years to cover a lot,that was great.

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That's awesome.

The cost is "still" thousands of dollars, you are just able to get sponsors to cover it ;)

 

We fundraise. Have a few sponsors, but they're in the couple of hundred bucks range... Not a lot of industry here to try to get sponsorship from. And they're all hit up by every kids group in town to be sponsors.

We did win a grant for the last 2 years to cover a lot,that was great.

 

Keep working your sponsors. We get local businesses (vet hospital, medical practices, hardware stores, etc.) Previously, we had a pretty big sponsorship from NASA (regional facility) -- which we are very hopeful to maintain unless the Trump budget eliminating all educational funding from NASA is adopted, and the team's big win at World's should bring in some more . . .

 

It took a lot of leg work from incredibly dedicated mentors to take MARS where it is . . . And, yes, it's 50k+/yr budget . . . 

 

Also, our team is for the entire region, not a specific school, so we're able to draw from a wide pool of sponsors. I think that's ideal. Certainly works great for us.

Edited by StephanieZ
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I gave 1/2 credit of "Robotics" each year for my son participated in FIRST FRC Robotics. He put in probably 400+ hours per year (5 hrs every Wednesday all year, plus another 20+ hrs every weekend during build and competition season, plus 3-5 travel weekends of 40+ hours . . . plus extra outreach events, etc.), and I have no qualms about the credits.  My daughter just joined the team, and I'll do the same for her. 

 

Did you not count it as an extra-curricular then? My dd puts in quite a number of hours per week, she is on an FTC team,  but we are counting it as an extracurricular activity. My understanding is it can only be one or the other, not both.

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Did you not count it as an extra-curricular then? My dd puts in quite a number of hours per week, she is on an FTC team,  but we are counting it as an extracurricular activity. My understanding is it can only be one or the other, not both.

 

I list it both places. Just like music . . . Just because a kid takes orchestra at school (and gets credit for it) doesn't change the fact that they spend 100s of more hours on it outside of school. I know it's messy as a homeschooler, but I don't believe that all activities must be one or the other . . .

 

That said, my kids have tons of other extracurriculars (1000s of volunteer hours over many years to a local environmental education group, TONS of music, etc), and have been *very* easy admits to the schools they've applied to (National Merit Scholars applying to big state schools where they are guaranteed huge merit scholarships, and admission itself is a given), so I'm not particularly worked up about the details. I'm sure if my last kiddo were applying to Ivies/similar where admission wasn't assured, I'd be more worked up about tweaking the resume just right. 

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