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From left, the Brickchargers included Levi Baca, Matt Sherman, coach Wendy Sherman, William Moe, Dalton Ebnet, coach Dave Moe and Hunter Ebnet.
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On Dec. 10, Pequot Lakes sent a group of five boys to a regional Lego League tournament in St. Paul where they placed fifth overall.
They had been meeting twice weekly since early September to plan and practice for the event. The team's name was the Brickchargers and team members were Levi Baca, Dalton Ebnet, Hunter Ebnet, William Moe and Matt Sherman. Coaches were Dave Moe and Wendy Sherman.
The best way to summarize First Lego League (FLL) is to say that it is a robotics program for 9- to 14-year-olds, which is designed to get children excited about science and technology, and teach them valuable employment and life skills. FLL started in 1998 and now has more than 20,000 teams in more than 61 countries.
In FLL, the children do the work. The work is programming an autonomous robot (using the LEGO¨ MINDSTORMS¨ robot set) to score points on a thematic playing surface, create an innovative solution to a problem as part of their project, all while guided by the FLL Core Values. These three elements - the Robot Game, Project, and FLL Core Values - make up what is called the yearly Challenge.
This year's Challenge theme was "Food Factor."
At the tournament there are four areas the teams are judged in: research project, robot design/programming, Core Values, and the robot game.
In the research project, teams explore an actual problem that today's scientists and engineers are trying to solve, develop an innovative solution to that problem, and share their findings in a creative way.
In the robot design/programming, teams are judged on the quality and uniqueness of their robot's design as well as the accuracy and successfulness of their programming.
In Core Values, teams learn that friendly competition and mutual gain are not separate goals, and that helping one another is the foundation of teamwork. Teams are judged on how well they display these qualities at the tournament.
In the robot game, teams build and program a unique autonomous robot using Lego Mindstorms technology to score points in 2.5-minute matches on a themed playing field. They have three rounds to get as many missions as possible accomplished.
This year's team placed fifth overall in a field of 32 teams. Their individual scores were as follows: robot game, second; core values, third; research project, seventh; design/programming, ninth.
If you have interest in finding out more about FLL, visit www.firstlegoleague.org.
