Robotics competition team advances to state LEGO event

Members of the LEGO robotics competition team are pictured above. (Photos by Rita Olson)

The Mountain Home school district's FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team will advance to state-level competition after a successful showing at the Southwestern Idaho regional contest on Saturday, Dec. 13.

The event was hosted by Mountain View High School in Meridian and featured a total of 17 regional teams. Mountain Home earned a second-place Robot Performance Award and a third-place Project Award.

FIRST LEGO League is an international program designed "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)" and has grown from 1,600 participants in the U.S. in 1998 to over 10,000 teams composed of more than 100,000 children, collectively, worldwide in 2007.

Mountain Home has participated in the event for the past three years.

Mountain Home's Gifted and Talented (GT) students have an opportunity to participate in FIRST LEGO League and Mars Rover, another LEGO challenge for 5th- and 6th-grade students, as an outreach of the school district's GT program. Teachers Rita Olson and Dave Holland facilitate the program.

According to Olson, participation in the competitions can be a rewarding experience with long-term positive effects. "You get a sense of satisfaction that you are doing something that may be a start of something bigger in the future. Experience working within the confines of a team is an important life skill," she said.

Members of the 2008 Mountain Home team, known as the "Pollution Revolution Resolution" are: Shani Clifton, Mitch Felton, Rachel Goodman, Georgia Hansen, Shaun Holland, Brady McFarland, Peyton Lettkeman, and David Trouten.

The participants range in age from 10-13. Goodman, a five-year veteran of the LEGO challenge programs, and Felton, a four-year participant, serve as team leaders.

Clifton, Holland, and McFarland are also prior-year competitors. Hansen, Lettkeman, and Trouten are new to the team.

The group has been meeting once a week since September to prepare for the competition.

About six weeks prior to the event FLL revealed its challenge theme for this year's competition: Climate Connections. Past challenges have included Volcanic Panic, Arctic Impact, and Ocean Odyssey among others.

Teams are scored according to their ability to achieve given objectives for a research project and a robot game. Technical awards are given for Robot Design and Robot Performance. Team awards are given for Project Presentation and Teamwork. The Champion Award is given to one team that displays a strong sense of teamwork and overall excellence.

The Robot Game features LEGO robots built from kits. Each team designs and programs the machines itself. Competing teams have two and a half minutes to achieve as many theme-related challenges as they can. This year's game included tasks such as burying carbon dioxide, raising the flood barrier and constructing levees on specially designed 93"x45" playing fields.

Mountain Home's research project focused on the protection and utilization of riparian areas (lands bordering bodies of water). To achieve the objectives, the team presented its observations of climate effects on local environment by identifying a problem, creating a solution, and sharing their ideas with others.

This type of competition is not without cost. In previous years the robot kit was borrowed. This year one was purchased for the program. Registration fees, competition fees, and sundry other expenses have been absorbed by Olson and her husband.

"My husband and I think it is vitally important for kids to have this kind of experience," she said. The Olsons purchased the robot kit and have donated a laptop to the team for robot programming. Much of their personal time, money, and materials have gone into providing the educational experience for the students.

PRR hopes to attend the statewide competition on Jan. 17 at the University of Idaho in Moscow where they will contend with other regional teams for a chance to compete nationally. In the meantime they will be refining their team interaction and practicing "gracious professionalism," a key ideal of the FLL program.

For more information on FIRST LEGO programs go to www.firstlegoleague.org.