The ‘FIRST LEGO League’ competition took place on 18th November, hosted by W5 in the Odyssey, Belfast. This was the first time this world wide competition was open to schools in Northern Ireland. Eighteen schools from across Northern Ireland entered the competition with teams of up to ten pupils, ages 12 -18.The ‘FIRST LEGO League’ competition theme this year was “Climate Connections.” Each team had to conduct research on climate change, construct and program robots, demonstrate teamwork and undergo a design review where they had to explain their designs to a panel of judges.
I think it was really fun. When I was little, I used to play with LEGO a lot. It’s nice to get back to LEGO.” Donagh Quigg
“We got to build things, we got to customize and we got to play with it.” Lauren Doherty
Prior to the competition day, the pupils had to construct a robot using a LEGO robotics set, called LEGO Mindstorms and program the robot with software tools similar to what is used by professional engineers. Each team had to program their robot to execute climate-improving missions.
This year’s competition taught pupils about the factors affecting climates. The pupils had to research the climate in their area, compare it to a similar region in the world, talk about ways to predict the climate and come up with solutions to control it. The SPK 10 team from St. Paul’s selected a local climate issue related to landfill sites and compared their problems to those of areas in England and in Australia.
“I learned a lot about the problems associated with landfill sites and how it can contribute to climate change. It was interesting to learn that there are other places in the world that are experiencing the same problems.” Jordan Mullan
The judges evaluated the team members on their research projects, robot designs and teamwork efficiency. After initial judging, each team’s robot had 3 chances to complete 19 different climate-improving missions.
“Our goal was to get the robot to do as many missions as we could within two and a half minutes”. Megan McCusker.
“The robot had to complete tasks like, construct levees, collect carbon dioxide, bury it, and take an ice-core sample.” Cathal Mullan
“I liked working on the missions with my friends. We had to figure out how to do it together and make an attachment to do the missions. If one way didn’t work, we tried a different way.” Patrick Bradley
Judges awarded prizes to teams in four categories: research, performance, design and teamwork. St. Paul’s College Kilrea team ‘SPK 10′ reached the semi-final stages of the robot performance and gained third place in the competition.
“The day was really fun and a good experience. We got to meet other teams and see how their robots performed.” Dermot Draine
“The competition was fun and the event was really exciting for the pupils. It is a great way of promoting science, maths and technology in a fun and enjoyable way. The team learned so much from taking part without actually realising they were learning.” Miss L. McGoldrick
This event was a qualifying tournament and all the teams were competing to advance to the UK tournament based on their scores with the hope of qualifying for the FLL World festival in Atlanta in April.
