Registration
Kick-off Basics
Kick-off Workshops
Season Guidance for Covid-19 Interruptions
Team Surveys
Online Team List

Fundraising Option for Public Schools

Registration!

Registration is open! Many teams have already registered for this season while others are waiting to see what’s gonna happen. Be assured that we WILL have a season, even if it needs to be a remote one. If you have questions about registration, please send your questions to ftc@firstinspires.org.

Kick-off – September 12th

Ultimate Goal sponsored by Qualcomm kicks off on September 12th! Our kick-off event this year will be virtual. While it may be a slightly lower fun factor, it does allow some things that we couldn’t do if we were all together on one day. We are planning a variety of pre-recorded workshops as well as some live presentations with Q/A sessions. We will be posting a schedule shortly but we anticipate that we will begin about 9:00am and will likely wrap up our “live” activities mid afternoon. Look for a separate email shortly with details.

Workshops

Thanks to the many teams who’ve signed up to host a workshop. While some may be live, many will be pre-recorded for teams to view on their own schedules. This information will be posted on our site in a new section we are calling “Teams Helping Teams”. If your team is interested in having something posted in this section, please contact us at ftc@playingatlearning.org. We will be posting the content we’ve received so far this coming week.

Covid Information

We’ve had many questions about what teams in our area are doing to safely meet. We service a fairly large geographic area with a wide variation of current circumstances with respect to Covid-19. It can be hard to answer that question for everyone. FIRST has put out a document that might be helpful that’s linked here. It’s titled “Season Guidance for Covid-19 Interruptions”. It will continue to be updated as more information can be added to it.

Team Surveys

We sent a survey earlier this summer and appreciate many of you have already sent in your responses. The survey addresses what your team’s plans are for the season. We’ve asked that you update your answers as your situations become more known. If you haven’t had a chance to respond or update your answers, you can still do so. Here’s the link for the original survey. If you’ve already responded, you received an email with your responses that includes a link to update those responses.

As these are unpredictable times, we are once again asking for your input. We are asking each team to fill out this quick Google form about what your thoughts are on this year’s competition season specifically. Here’s the link. It’s only 7 questions so please help us out!

Online Team List

If you’ve had a look at our website recently, you might notice that our current team list has been updated with those teams that have registered already, but it looks different! The information in the list can be searched (box at the top) and can be sorted by clicking on the headings of each column. The team’s status will be found under a link (coming soon) that will include the coaches’ screening status and what events they’ve signed up for. We are also planning to make team lists for each event available under the qualifier listing. Other information such as QT locations, etc will be updated shortly as we know more about what our season might look like.

Fundraising for Public Schools

FIRST Material Grants are available from NewsCorp via DonorsChoose for US Public and US Public Charter School educators only. Funding is for material only (not registration or competition) but may include hardware that a team might need  including tools, spare parts, computers, or 3D printers. The recommendation is to keep project requests below $2k but educators may submit multiple projects. Donor Choose FIRST Help Center provides details on how to create a project. Once it’s approved, educators must complete a project identification form for NewsCorp to see the request. Educator project requests will be reviewed every 2-4 weeks until funding is exhausted.

As always, let us know if you have questions. We’ll be sending more information about kick-off shortly!

Dianne & Mark