HANAMA‘ULU — The crowd erupted in jubilation long before the clock ran out on the final mission, Saturday. When the buzzer finally sounded, the Koloa Technos, one of the last teams competing in the Performance phase, erupted in jubilation. The
HANAMA‘ULU — The crowd erupted in jubilation long before the clock ran out on the final mission, Saturday.
When the buzzer finally sounded, the Koloa Technos, one of the last teams competing in the Performance phase, erupted in jubilation.
The Technos earned top scores in all three rounds, or missions, at the 2nd Annual FIRST LEGO League Kaua‘i Qualifier which unfolded before an overflow audience at King Kaumuali‘i School.
“This is absolutely great,” said Mia Ako of the Kaua‘i Economic Development Board. “This is the second time we’ve held the event and we have 10 schools participating. Last year was the first event and we had four schools.”
Koloa Technos earned top honors in the Performance phase and was one of three school teams advancing to the O‘ahu competition scheduled for Dec. 19 at the Neal Blaisdell Center.
“But the competition is more than what the spectators see,” said Ako. “There are interviews with judges, presentations, and qualifying interviews to ensure that students ‘own’ the work. That means students did the work, not parents or teachers.”
Waimea Canyon Middle School earned top honors in the Robot Design phase of the competition and also earned the right to advance to the O‘ahu competition.
Host school King Kaumuali‘i will also advance, the team earning top honors in the Project Award phase.
Kilauea School, complete with its entourage of supporters, worked hard and finished with top honors in the Leadership phase.
Jim Cox, a physics teacher at Kapa‘a High School, said the goal is to get the students excited about the program.
Based on the involvement from the students and spectators, it succeeded.
“It also differs from other programs because it teaches gracious professionalism,” Cox said. “When you’re on the game floor, you are for your team, but once you’re off the floor, everyone helps each other.”
Cox said the robotics program, of which the FIRST LEGO League is just one of four phases, teaches students engineering skills and problem solving.
The program includes the FIRST LEGO League which serves as an introductory course to robotics. It is geared for elementary and middle schools.
Cox said at this level, there are software available to students in the creation of autonomous robots, but students simply move icons from Web sites to their computers to create the programs.
At the next level, Vex robotics, students actually do the programming to enable the robot to move. That program covers elementary and middle schools as well.
The Bot Ball program and the FIRST robotics programs overlap middle school and high school students, Cox said.
Kaua‘i has, with the 2009 FIRST LEGO Challenge, at least three of the programs within its school system.
Stu Burley heads up an underwater robotics program, or the Remotely Operated Vehicle, at Waimea High School where teams compete on the Big Island. They were seen at the recent Grove Farm Swap Meet with an exhibition craft for demonstrations while selling Kaua‘i Cookie Company items as a fundraiser.
Ako said during the performance phase, each round, or mission, has a set of tasks that need to be accomplished to collect points. Each of the icons set up on the game table represents a specific task centered around this year’s theme of transportation. Each team had three missions to try and achieve its highest score of the day.
The key to the 2009 Challenge, themed “Smart Move,” is accessing people, places, goods and services in the safest, most efficient way possible.
