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Yucaipa middle school advances in Legoland robotics competitionRIVERSIDE, Nov 15, 2009 (San Bernardino County Sun - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Beattie Middle School's Robotics Club students, and about 400 others, put their technical skills to the test Saturday. The students participated in the First Lego League's (FLL) qualifying tournament held at UC Riverside. Three overall winning teams, one of which was Serrano Middle School in Yucaipa, were selected to compete Dec. 5 at the FLL SoCal Championship at Legoland in Carlsbad. Each team configured a robot from pieces in a Lego kit and programmed its movements and actions along a pool table-size map filled with objects and obstacles. Schools were judged in four equal categories -- robot design, teamwork, robot performance and science research project. Each team's presentation attempted to solve a transportation problem in their community. Beattie Middle School won first place. "This is a way to train them to work together and get in the team spirit," said Rachel Tillema, co-team advisor and eighth-grade teacher. After students are dismissed from school, busy traffic creates multiple hazards, student Adrian Meza, 11, said. The 30-minute span of danger is what they aimed to resolve in their presentation. "We're trying to add speed bumps to slow them down" and prevent accidents, he said. They also proposed a safety strategy meeting between the California Highway Patrol and the community. "We're also trying to get people to turn off their cars for a long period of time because the pollution hurts people, especially (those) with asthma," Meza said. Each team's robots navigated the map according to the student-designed computer programming. Each robot picked-up, knocked-down and grabbed various objects on the course. Each formula matters and precession is key, the students said. "Sometimes you position it wrong," Beattie student Dustin Park, 10, said. "Or it hits something that it's not supposed to," Beattie student Brent Duvall, 10, said. "One small mistake can be real crucial," Meza said. Each school had three chances to run the robotics map and only their best score was used for judging. The robotics club at Serrano Middle School was formed this year and they won the overall second place trophy and qualified for the championship tournament. "I'm so excited to go to Legoland," student Monica Beech, 13, said. "We worked really hard." Leading up to the event, Serrano students were off track and weren't at school, but they still came to prepare for the tournament. We've been working on it for about six weeks, student Martin Valdez, 12, said. Science is his favorite subject and this project helped him brainstorm and find ways to problem solve, he said. "When the whole team works together I actually feel good and think we can actually win an award," Valdez said. Students from Park View Middle School in Yucaipa also worked on the project during their break time and took home the second place trophy for best scientific research project and the first place trophy for best robot performance. They tried to beat their previous performance points and their winning score was 215, on a 400-point scale, math teacher Karen Chamber said. Students learned problem solving skills and "I think it shows through teamwork and perseverance," she said. Robotics clubs help students learn about engineering, but also channels their competitive edge towards academics, said Robert Foster, Beattie's co-advisor and eighth-grade science teacher. "It helps us steer them towards careers...It gets them thing that this might be something they want to do when they get to college," he said. "That's really important to us." To see more of the San Bernardino County Sun, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sbsun.com. Copyright (c) 2009, San Bernardino County Sun, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |