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Techie Tweens head to state competitionJan 08, 2013 (The Cary News (Cary - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- HOLLY SPRINGS -- Once the countdown began, determination and focus settled across the faces of the nine girls who swapped out Lego parts and put their robot, Penelope, in position to cross the game board. The girls, ages 8 to 12 from Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina, make up team Techie Tweens, which won first place at the FIRST LEGO League Raleigh regional competition in December. The team is headed to the state championship Saturday in Greensboro. About 300 teams competed in the robot challenge in North Carolina; about 60 advanced to the state championships. Each week, the all-girl Techie Tweens team practices about six hours to adjust programming, fix robot parts and refine its presentation for judges. This year's Lego League Challenge theme is "Senior Solutions." Robots must navigate a tabletop game board with mini-replicas of popular senior activities such as quilting, gardening and bowling. The Techie Tweens are only in their second year competing as a team, but they've come pretty far, said coaches Shawn and Jennifer Edmondson. "We were not expecting the win at regionals," said Jennifer Edmondson. "We heard the top teams called and we still hadn't heard our names. The girls kind of hunched over. Then they called our names and we just couldn't believe it. It was kind of a sweet win." An all-girl team is unique within the league, said Jennifer Edmondson. "I know we've had a couple of people approach us interested in our team because it's all girls," she said. "This is definitely a way to get little girls to see science, engineering or mathematics -- that these are fields that they could think about that they wouldn't have before." The girls must do all the programming themselves using a software program from FIRST LEGO League that incorporates graphics to dictate the robot's actions. "They get good at troubleshooting and debugging," said Shawn Edmondson, who has a background in computer science. Working with the robot is one of 12-year-old Rhyann Clarke's favorite parts of competing. "I like it when you work hard on a mission and you set up your program and it works," she said. "Or you do something else and something good comes out of it." As part of the community engagement piece of the challenge, teams must identify a problem within the senior-citizen community and devise a solution. After interviewing their grandparents, a local librarian and people who work with seniors, Techie Tweens discovered that most older folks had trouble using technology such as iPads, smartphones and computers. So the team created a program in which team members offer seniors one-on-one crash courses on how to send text messages and email and download applications. Seniors can sign up at www.techietweens.com. "We grew up with this technology," said Earle Arnold, 11, of Fuquay-Varina. "It's a lot easier for us to teach it than it is for adults, because they might not know it themselves." Caroline Edmondson, 8 and her 11-year-old sister, Sarah, taught their grandmother how to text. "She didn't know how it worked, or how to do it, because she had a simple phone," Caroline said. Ramos: 919-460-2609 ___ (c)2013 The Cary News (Cary, N.C.) Visit The Cary News (Cary, N.C.) at www.carynews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |