About FIRST®
FIRST® is an international organization founded in 1989 to promote student interest in math and science. FIRST® is an acronym for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." The program was founded by Dean Kamen and Dr. Woody Flowers. FIRST® seeks to stimulate interest in science, technology and mathematics through fun and engaging problem-solving programs including FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC), FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC), FIRST® LEGO League (FLL). Each program is designed to meet different developmental age levels and continuously promotes FIRST® Core Values and Gracious Professionalism. These programs promote the possibilities and challenges of technology and provide an opportunity for success.
There are competitive programs that FIRST® offers that are age specific.
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FIRST® LEGO League Explore - A program for elementary students to create a presentation and build a model to demonstrate their problem solving skills.
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FIRST® LEGO League Challenge - A programLEGO robotics competition for grades 4 thru middle school students. The competition involves build a robot using LEGO tech modules around a central theme. Fairport Robotics, and the Fairport school district support four FLL teams.
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FIRST® Tech Challenge (FTC) is a robotics competition for high school students. In this competition students create a smaller, more affordable robot. Competitons are mostly held in local school gyms.
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FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC) is for high school students. This is the division that Team 578 competes in. In this division students create a custom robot of their own design with the help from mentors with varied professional backgrounds. These competitions have two levels, Regional and District. Regionals are typically held in college field houses, or city arenas. Teams typically have to win a Regional (with 2 other robots in an alliance) to earn a spot at Worlds. District matches work more like scholastic sports, where the teams compete relatively local and work on a ranking that may qualify them for the World Competition. Typically there will be 6 or 7 hundred teams from across the world competing.
To find out more about FIRST® and how you might get evolved you can click on this link.
If you would like to see where FIRST® may have gotten the inspiration to start from, check these two old PBS NOVA episodes with Peter Graves (and Dr. Woody Flowers' MIT ME270 class).