CCMS
Students Participate in FLL Competition
The best way to summarize FIRST LEGO
League is to say that it is a robotics program for 9 to 16 year olds, which is
designed to get children excited about science and technology -- and teach them
valuable employment and life skills. FLL can be used in a classroom setting but
is not solely designed for this purpose.
Each Challenge has three parts: the Robot Game,
the Project,
and the FLL
Core Values. Teams of up to ten children, with
one adult coach, participate in the Challenge by programming an autonomous
robot to score points on a themed playing field (Robot Game), developing a
solution to a problem they have identified (Project), all guided by the FLL Core Values.
Teams may then choose to attend an official tournament,
hosted by one of our Operational Partners.
(Taken
from: http://firstlegoleague.org)
Central
Cambria Middle School students from the 7th and 8th grade
Enrichment class competed this past Sunday in the Southwest/Central PA
Championship held at Saint Francis University.
Each of our teams won an award. One team (The Devil Dominators) won the
“Sticking To It” award and the other team (The Robotic Devils) won “Best Team
Spirit.” In the robot programming portion of the competition we placed seventh
and eighth out of twelve teams.
The theme
this year was Senior Solutions. For the
project portion of the competition, we partnered with some senior citizens from
the Ebensburg Senior Center. Each team
had to come up with an idea for a product that would make seniors’ lives
easier. To meet this goal we conducted interviews with the Seniors to determine
what problems they faced. We then chose
a problem on which to focus and developed a solution. The Robotic Devils decided to focus on problems
associated with canes. They came up with the “Infinity Cane,” which is a cane
that is made to fit the seniors’ needs. The Devil Dominators focused on
technology and socialization and came up with the “eZ-TAB”, which is a tablet
that is easier, bigger, and clearer for seniors to use.
The
opportunity to participate in the FLL Challenge was made possible by donations
from The H. F. Lenz Company, Attorney Heath Long, The Central Cambria Education
Foundation, and Saint Francis University.
Participation has allowed us to build and refine skills in the area of
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math and we are grateful for the
opportunity.
