| To have a successful Regional Competition, we need over 80 volunteers. Your commitment can be as short as a few hours or up to attendance of the entire 3 day event. Don’t worry about not having the right skills or knowledge; all of the volunteer jobs are easy to learn and fun to do. You can even volunteer as a group and work with a group of your friends. To learn more scroll down or click here.
The 2007 West Michigan Regional Competition will be held on March 29th through March 31st at the Grand Valley State University Allendale Campus field house.
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Volunteers
For questions or specific information on volunteering, please contact;
Tina Ray Volunteer Coordinator
volray@westmichiganregional.com
MENTORS
Teams Need Mentors – With Wide Ranging Skills
Since the founding of the West Michigan Regional, visibility and interest has exploded! Schools from Holland to Grand Rapids to Detroit to Chicago are working to field teams for the competitions. Major corporations are working to provide financial, facility, and other support for these teams. However, to succeed, they need adult mentors who can help the teams organizationally and technically.
Do you have professional or personal experience or interest in:
Designing and building things?
- Electronics?
- Robotics?
- Computer programming?
- Computer Aided Design?
- Animation?
- PR, marketing, and communications?
- Finance and team operations?
- Helping our youth learn about science and technology in a practical and fun forum?
If you are interested in any of these, you can be a mentor.
What you will do as a mentor?
A mentor Inspires students in science and technology.
- Motivates and engages students in the meaningful activities.
- Creates open communication.
- Facilitates instruction and has students do as much work as possible.
Mentoring is the process by which an experienced person provides advice, support, and encouragement to a less experienced person. A mentor is a teacher or advisor who leads through guidance and example. On a FIRST team, the mentor’s goal is to actively share wisdom and knowledge with the students to foster intellectual growth. Mentors need to help each other discover ways of adapting instruction to reach every student on the team. The mentors and students are equal and become united through a partnership where each works collaboratively toward a mutual and beneficial goal.
The team mentors will work with the students to learn technical and organizational skills needed to build a robot and compete as a unified team. You will help the team design and implement a robotic system to compete in a specific competitive environment using predefined parts. In addition to having some fun, you will have a profoundly positive impact on our children, our schools, and our community.
2007 FIRST Robotics Competition Season
| September-December 2006 | Team formation and organization. |
| Saturday, January 6, 2007 | Live NASA-TV feed – competition challenge disclosure. Identical kits-of-parts distributed to all teams. |
| January 6th – February 20th | Six week robot-build period. |
| Tuesday, February 20, 2007 | Ship robot to Regional Competition. |
| Thur-Sat, March 29th-March 31st | West Michigan Regional Event at GVSU Field house. |
2006 FIRST LEGO League Season
| Late Spring – Late Summer | Team formation and organization. |
| September | 2006 Mission Announced and Build Season Begins |
| November – December | Various Local and State Tournaments |
Time Commitment
Time commitment is a highly individual thing – there is no one answer. It can be as little as a few hours per week for just a couple of weeks, to back-to-back days for one to two weeks, to a whole bunch for those that choose. The only meaningful answer comes out of attending a team meeting and/or talking with a Team-Leader and agreeing on that piece with which you are personally comfortable committing. It is always your choice.