MINDSTORMING, mechanics and mini-sumo robot battles marked the atmosphere at the first Lego League contest in Galway at the weekend, when a local team secured the Irish national title.
Moycullen club Termin8tors secured the coveted championship, and a trip to the European finals in Germany, against stiff competition from 23 other teams from around the island.
Lego had been taken on space missions many times, but one did not have to be an astronaut to feel “over the moon” about participating, one Mayo competitor noted before darting off to a series of day-long robotics challenges.
Nor is it really about Lego at all, first-time competitors Julie Morgan (16) and Farah Tahir (16), fourth-year students at Ursuline secondary school in Blackrock, Cork, said. “It’s about robotics, which is not as complicated as it sounds, and the project we have to do is also very important.”
The contest for nine- to 16-year-olds involves several elements, including programming an autonomous robot to score points on a playing surface and undertaking a project. This year the theme was “food safety”, and the Ursuline students studied solutions to E.coli contamination for their entry.
Holly Keating (15) and Connor Tiernan (16), both transition-year (TY) students in St Oliver’s Community College in Drogheda, Co Louth, said it was probably the “best thing about TY”. They were members of two teams fielded by technology teacher Cathal Giblin, who described it as “real high-end learning” in science, technology and computer programming.
Galway primary teacher Jane Shimizu of Scoil Chaitríona in Renmore nurtures enthusiasm in Lego with infant classes, by building rockets and suchlike. Her 16-year- old son Eoin was competing with Galway’s Coláiste na Coiribe, which, as a past winner, earned a trip several years ago to First Lego in Atlanta in the US.
“It’s not just about science and technology, as it has a very strong social and team-building dimension and the students also learn film-making skills for their project,” she said. “It can be very intense, very exciting and just great fun.”
Even university students get to join in, as contest host Bernard Kirk, director of the Galway Education Centre, explained. The “big kids” were invited to participate in mini-sumo robot battles, while there were also interactive displays by the Science Gallery, Irish Robotics and Trinity College Dublin’s department of mechanical and manufacturing engineering.
