by Jarren Harkema
Jarren Harkema is a home-schooled high school student who won his LiveCode license by entering a coding competition with RunRev. He is now sharing his passion for coding with his peers by mentoring The Sharks, a home-schooled FIRST LEGO League Team from Michigan.
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(This is Part 2 of Robotics, Research and Apps: Reporting from FIRST LEGO League. Part 1 can be viewed here).
Loud speakers are playing Party Rock Anthem in a gym full of elementary and middle school students. They wear brightly colored T-Shirts displaying fun team names, such as “The Fantastic Fourheads” and “The Sky Guys”. Some are dancing around, cheering, or clutching their hair in anticipation. The atmosphere is very energetic and tense. The main event? Three pairs of 4 by 8 foot plywood tables hold a brightly colored mat and are strewn with LEGO models.
At each table are two students hunching over the robots, which they have spent the past 3 months perfecting. Their fingers are poised to activate their robot on the announcer’s cue. After a lively team introduction, the announcer declares “THREE, TWO, ONE, GO!!!” Fingers press buttons, motors whirl, wheels spin, and off go the robots running around frantically solving challenges as fast as possible. This is the accumulation of months of R&D, engineering, programming, trouble shooting, and practicing. One robot cherry picks a green bottle while leaving orange ones undisturbed. Another completes a patchwork quilt by sliding a square onto its correct mark. Yet another knocks over little LEGO pins using a miniature bowling ball…. I am honored to be watching the future’s young scientists and engineers. This is the West Michigan FIRST LEGO League Regional Tournament.
48 teams composed of 3-10 students have come to show off their engineering and programming skills to judges, peers, and family. Little do they know now, that the skills they have learned could land them a job in software engineering or mechanical design in the near future. “The Sharks”, the home-schooled team I have mentored over the past few months, have prepared their robot to complete 9 out of 15 missions, which is quite an impressive number. Teams have a stab at completing as many missions as possible during a 2 1/2 minute match, and to get even half of the missions accomplished invokes whooping and hollering from everyone watching. However, the points on the table only make up a quarter of the overall score. There are three other judging criteria the teams must also complete.
There are also classrooms where interviewing is taking place. Three categories of judging evaluate each team. In the Technical judging room, teams are enthusiastically explaining the design process of their robot to a panel of judges who look over the team’s programs, building techniques, and strategies for completing the mission challenges. Students demo their robots, answer questions, and illustrate problems they ran into during the development.
In another room students are given a teamwork challenge to complete together. The goal for this tournament was to build a gingerbread house out of the materials provided. Seems simple right? Try having 20 hands working on a paper plate sized house simultaneously and see how simple it is. The team must work together to solve the challenge, while exhibiting the FIRST LEGO League Core Values. Surprisingly, the judges don’t care what the finished product looks like. All they are observing is how well the students work together, include one another, and implement one another’s ideas into one cohesive solution. After the teamwork challenge is complete, the judges ask questions regarding their teamwork throughout their season. What kind of problems did they face that they had to work together to solve? How will teamwork help them in the future?
Finally, the least known aspect about FIRST LEGO League, and yet the most important, is the research project judging. Along with the robot, there is a yearly real world theme that teams are given to research. The goal is to find a problem within the subject, create a new innovative solution to the problem, and present it in a creative 5 minute presentation. Teams present their research in a variety of different ways. Presentations vary from infomercials promoting their solution, to plays acting out their problem, to songs explaining all that the team has learned. After their presentation, teams are asked about the feasibility of their solution, what experts in the field they talked to, and where they got their research from. (Read my previous post if you would like to know more about the research project for this years “Senior Solutions” challenge)
All four of these events are run throughout the course of the day, with teams consistently running here and there going to their next interview or robot match. But all of the hectic commotion is more than worth it. Teams make new friends, learn new things, and have an opportunity to show off everything they worked on. Oh, and did I mention trophies? Yes. Lots and lots of trophies, and the chance to advance to the state level competition! At the end of the day there are over 20 trophies up for grabs, not including the 13 state qualifier trophies. These awards range from Most Innovative Robot Design, to Most Creative Presentation, to the Rising Star Award – recognizing a rookie team that did an exceptional job for its first year.
The closing ceremonies are always the funniest part of the tournament, with loud speakers blasting songs such as the Macarena, the Chicken Dance, and the Cha-Cha Slide. Kids dance all over the place, form conga lines, and have a flat out good time. After getting all the sillies out of the kids, the tournament director takes the microphone and begins awarding trophies. When the team name is called, everyone cheers and the team stampedes down the bleachers to claim their reward.
For “The Sharks”, the team I mentor, this closing ceremony was nerve wrecking! They watched the trophies slowly disappear, as teams around them claimed the programming award, innovative solution award, and other such top honors. Once all the standard awards were given out, the state qualifiers were announced. Moving up the list, The Sharks grew more and more nervous. The tournament director holds up the giant first place trophy for all to see, announcing “And the first place grand champion, and final state qualifier goes to…” He then runs straight toward my team yelling at the top of his lungs, “THE SHARKS!!!!”. We celebrated that night with some well deserved ice cream! (No, the robot was not allowed to have any.)
The Sharks did an incredible job earning the champions award at the regional tournament. However, they still have a lot of work to do before the state competition on Saturday, December 8th. Stay tuned to find out the results, and learn more about the team’s research project!
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