First Lego League at NSCC, Acadia inspires young students
Lego robot-building competition helps post-secondary schools connect with students in elementary and high school
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Sarty sisters, Julia (right) and Isabel (centre), pose with their lego robot with their friend Emma Travers (left). (Photo: Monica Riehl)
Down in the basement of the Travers' home in Bedford, N.S., the Beast springs to life.
His crawler treads pull him along as he motors across the tabletop and buzzes towards the small red and gray claw at the table's edge. With one bump from the Beast, a name chosen by his architects of design, the claw captures a carefully balanced, black lego bar. The three inventors jump and squeal with delight.
Emma Travers, 12 - along with Isabel Sarty, 11, and her sister Julia, 13 - created the Beast, a lego Mindstorm robot. His design, maneuvers and abilities were programmed by the young inventors, otherwise known as E.I.J. Robotics. The group is one of six teams from Metro Halifax competing in the provincial First Lego League championship at Acadia University on Jan. 29.
"The last competition we were at, we were the only team that was all girls," says Emma.
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Two First Lego League teams practice in the Travers family home in Bedford, N.S. Provincial competitions for this year's FLL will take place at Acadia University on Jan. 29.
This competition was the qualifying rounds of the FLL held at the Akerley campus of Nova Scotia Community College last month. E.I.J. Robotics earned the top project award and the teamwork award in their first FLL match.
FLL is a robotics competition for youth of ages 9 to 16. The "first" in FLL is an acronym for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." In partnership with lego, FLL tries to inspire young people to discover the fun of science and technology. This year's competition is expected to attract 171,000 children worldwide.
Nova Scotia's provincial competition next month is expected to attract 300 children from across the province according to Karen Wilder, Acadia's director for robot programming competitions. For the past five years, Acadia and the NSCC have partnered on the event. The qualifying rounds for Metro Halifax were held at NSCC in November.
NSCC became involved with FLL because the competition represents another way for NSCC's team, CollegePrep, to interact with elementary and high school students. NSCC wants to help the students explore their passions and turn them into a career.
NSCC engages young students
"Students are making decisions about post-secondary education earlier and the age group specific to (FLL) is where students begin to figure out what they like and dislike doing," says Chris Mogensen, project co-ordinator at NSCC, in an email.
He says by introducing young people to NSCC and its faculty through the FLL, "they will have a good idea as to whether the college is (the) right fit for them as they chart their post-secondary journey."
The E.I.J. Robotics trio aren't charting their journey just yet. But they do plan to move onto post-secondary after high school.
For Heather Travers, Emma's mother and coach of two FLL teams, "the expectation is not that they'll go into the computer sciences or engineering."
She wants them to "have a broad base of education, so that they have the opportunity not to shy away from anything because they are afraid."
Travers says she likes how the competition introduces children to fields that they wouldn't normally be exposed to at a young age.
The FLL accomplishes this with two components. The first involves the programmable lego robots with teams racing around an obstacle-filled competition table. The second requires teams to do research and a presentation about a topic relating to the annual theme.
This year's theme, Body Forward, is about the body.
E.I.J. Robotics' project focuses on the respiratory system. Heather's son Liam is a member of the B.R.I.C.K.S. of Bedford. Their project focuses on the heart.
Science as a confidence builder
The expectation of combining science and technology in this way is that participants will build knowledge, self-confidence and valuable employment and life skills.
Travers says the competition has been very effective in teaching life skills including how to get along, respecting other people's ideas, thinking critically, presenting in front of a group and developing interview skills. Travers and fellow coaches Maurice Rizcallah and Diane MacKenzie say they notice a difference in the boys team, especially since last year.
"You go over it enough that they have such ownership of the material that they're very confident in speaking about it," says Travers.
B.R.I.C.K.S. is comprised of Liam Travers, Keigan Tulloch, Ben Huggard, Patrick LeBlanc and Ryan Rizcallah, ages 10 to 11.
"I think our presentation was pretty good," says Patrick. "We nailed the thank-you."
The B.R.I.C.K.S. team is competing in FLL for the second time. They were the youngest team at this year's qualifying round and they took home the prize for top robot - they call him Bob.
All members of the group are involved in various extracurricular activities including hockey, soccer, swimming, snowboarding, sailing, playing guitar and the drums.
The boys say there's a lot of pressure in the FLL competition, similar to their other interests. They're already looking forward to next year because "we get better and better," says Liam.
The B.R.I.C.K.S. team has big plans for upcoming FLL competitions, but do these Grade 5 students really think about their future careers?
"I'm hoping to go to Harvard," says Ben.
He says he wants to be an anthropologist, or study insects or spiders, or maybe physics. Keigan wants to be a marine engineer while Patrick wants to be a doctor.
As for Liam and Ryan - they both say, "I want to be a lego designer."
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