Twenty-five teams from 10 different elementary schools gathered Saturday at Mesa View Elementary to showcase their robotic projects at the First Lego League Explore festival.
The Appalachia Intermediate Unit 8 is hosting the First Lego League Challenge competition through Friday.
The competition, with participants between the ages of 9 and 16, is being held in person at IU8’s 4500 Sixth Ave. location and virtually via Zoom.
The competition involves building and programming a Lego robot through research, problem-solving, coding and engineering. The objective is then to navigate the robot through various missions in a robot game.
Eleven teams from a four-county area and Maryland are competing. Students will meet with judges to present their projects, which are in three parts: core values, robot design and innovation.
Students will either complete robot game matches in real time or review their recordings with a head referee.
Franklin Monroe-Bots to compete at state
Staff report
Participating students this year are (from L to R) Eddie Heck, Jackson Crist, Brent Shofner, Ian Norris,Hunter Cottrell, and Chelsie Eyler. The Franklin Monroe-Bots are coached by Lisa Wendel and Brian Happy.
Provided photo
Provided photo
PITSBURG Franklin Monroe’s First Lego League team, the Franklin Monroe-Bots, participated in the regional First Lego League Challenge competition against 19 other teams and qualified to move onto the state level competition.
The First Lego League Challenge competition is for students ages 9-16 that involves researching, problem solving, coding, and engineering . The students are given a topic area and must identify and design a real world problem and solution for the competition. The other component to the competition is that students must also build and program a Lego robot to navigate missions of a robot game.
Ms Hunt said robotic games proved a challenge in rounds one and two.
“But the Rekin Sharks dug deep, found their resilience and fought back with a smashing round three and scored 280 points,” she said.
“This was 100 points better than the regional competition.
“Our team did not win an award but were winners on the day as they represented GSHS with true sportsmanship.
“They assisted other teams, they looked after each other and supported each other, they are already palling for next year’s FLL competition.”
Ms Hunt said she was very proud and honoured to have worked with such an amazing group of students.