I’ll need to check this out. Here in the rust-belt, new jobs are popping up, but they’re high tech jobs of the type that the FIRST program inspires interest in. As we’ve moved to a culture that seems to value consumption over creation, programs like this will be crucial for getting people (young and old) to see how imperative it is to move to an educational/occupational philosophy of encouraging students to become people who design machines rather than only presenting the option of being a good operator of machines. The key will be how well this can be integrated into education as a whole rather than just as an extracurricular activity.

As one who has been involved with these kinds of programs for a number of years now, it is worth pointing out that there are several programs for middle and high school students that emphasize robotics, FIRST being the largest and best known (others are Botball, BEST, VEX, and school sponsored programs like those at Carnegie-Mellon, all emphasizing variations on how to integrate robotics into learning programs).

The advantage robotics provides start with the fact that robotics projects have too many aspects to be done individually, so working in teams is a must, a valuable lesson for participants in and of itself. The “game” scenario employed by robotics programs is used because it provides easily understood objectives serving to test a robot’s ability to perform, survive, and cooperate in the context of the world in which it operates. Moreover, developing robots for such a context requires design, innovation, problem solution, math, physics, engineering, and perhaps most obviously, computer science and all that goes with it.

Robotics has become perhaps the most accessible and integrative educational arena we currently have available to us, also drawing from behavioral sciences, biological sciences, and sociology in implementation, since the purpose of robots in the first place is to assist us in doing tasks that we may not be well-enough equipped to handle safely (for example, a robotic explorer has far simpler life support needs than we do, or a robotics surgical assistant can help the surgeon perform with greater precision).

The hands-on nature of educational robotics programs keeps participants engaged, encouraging all kinds of reasons to learn on their own (and from peers) or to pay closer attention to what they are learning in classes. Most of these programs also require teams to document their development experience, so ability to write and present is a typical program emphasis, and it is not uncommon for aesthetic elements to get their due as well (in various guises, web-sites being one of them).

If you go to the world competition in St. Louis and hear an announcement in the PIT area, it’s me! I will be volunteering for my third year and I tell you, you’ve never seen anything like a FIRST Robotics competition. This is the ultimate sport for the mind.

The truly amazing part is that people who are not involved can stand in awe that the kids build a robot to play the game. What thrills me is that even though the teams compete, they also help and support each other. I announce ‘Team such and such needs a 3/8″ threaded bolts 6 inches” and other teams bring it to them. One year a team’s robot was damaged in shipping and other teams chipped in parts for them to build an exact replacement!! This is the ‘Gracious Professionalism’ that permeates everyone involved with FIRST. It is competition but it is cooperation.

Robots are the players, treated as equals (well, better, more like rock stars!) to thier human programmers and drivers. Teams scout other teams, look for comptenecies and build relationships. Every team is important because they have a particular aptitude in the game. The ‘winners’ are an alliance, three teams competing together in the finals, when the two prior days, they could have been battling each other in qualifying matches. So many life lessons rolled into one phenominal organization and competition.

You simply HAVE to see it to truly understand the brilliance of what Dean has created.

Proud to support team 131 CHAOS from Manchester, NH and volunteer. Lou Altman

It does mean that but it can also be used to describe a scholar in the humanities. FWIW, there’s also a long-standing digital-humanities listserv called Humanist.

Maybe I’m being naive, but doesn’t measuring the percentage of letters that a historical personage  sent to a particular country depend on how many of those letters actually survived?  What if Voltaire had a voluminous correspondence with an Englishwoman who subsequently burned all his letters?  It’s interesting to compile this kind of quantitative information, but I’d be careful about drawing conclusions from it.

This is a very good move. I hope this goes beyond Delhi region to the states, allowing students enrolled in state universities to take courses from out of state/central universities and institutes. It is also highly beneficial to mix technical courses for liberal arts or social science majors. India should also consider gradually getting rid of three-year bachelor degrees.