The First Lego League At Pace University

Beginning in October, nine to 14 year olds from all over Westchester gave up Saturdays and assorted weekdays in exchange for an activity that might seem more suited for preschoolers - building with Legos.Only their participation in the First Lego League, which culminated in a regional competition at Pace University on March 13, ranks far from child's play.

Meaning that to imagine dropping 20,000 leagues to fix a pipeline with Legos might come easier if your four, but envisioning it beneath the sea is something that might fill the Saturday of an actual Oceanographer.This thus served as the basis for this year’s tournament.

It then left the children to substitute an 8 by 4 foot table for the ocean floor and utilize their miniature robots as if they were real.Although unlike their early childhood, these engineers didn't have to spend their Saturdays wondering what it would be like if their plastic pieces only had a brain.

Missions, such as rescuing a dolphin or recovering archeological artifacts, are planned by the league and a programming software called Mindstorm put the robot’s ability to think and move into the hands of the children.

"I love computers, I like programming and I like Legos," says 11 year old Davis Wertheimer of why he participated with the Alpha Omega team despite the many hours invested.The all boys team from Seven Bridges finished 1st in Robot design, but fell short of winning the director’s award, which combined Research, Technical Ability, performance and teamwork with design.

Marching on Atlanta April 27th with their award to face worldwide competition will be the Techno Girls.Affiliated with the Girl Scouts, they began the season struggling to get their robot to move straight.

Only after deciding to scrap version 1.0 would they begin moving forward, but they still finished round one with a score of just 10 in performance.

The hung in as others teams scored as high as 400 with the inspiration of their Junior coach Olivia Rerek, according to Claire Diehl of North Salem Middle School."She thought we would be able to do it, said the 12 year old, "even if we didn't think so," and the Techno girls weren’t the only ones lacking belief.

They often heard chatter that went contrary to the outcome, according 10 year old Maya Anand from Robert E.Bell.For instance, she says, comments like, "Oh, we're competing against girls, this is going to be easy." On the other hand, proving them wrong, she said in hardly being able to contain her enthusiasm, "felt really good."

Still, the Alpha Omegas felt satisfied by their design while learning something about teamwork.Using a programming language of pictures, robots used sensors to move toward mission completion.Of course, with the trial and error tribulations of any technology, they ran into walls and differed on solutions.

“Sometimes people stopped cooperating and you couldn’t get anything done,” said 11 year old Archit Verma.Taking the advice of their coach, Dr.Dinesh Verma, the boys would vote on a course of action and the results speak for themselves.

Also Archit's father, Dr.Dinesh was surprised by their approach to troubleshooting and the creativity they exhibited."I'll confess, these kids are better than me," he said, and that coming from a computer researcher employed at the Thomas J.Watson Center.

Falling a little short to him in that department, Techno’s coach still managed to maximize her knowledge to the benefit of her team."I'm not a genius, I'm someone who got the girls fired up and got them moving in the right direction," said Ann Marie Imbriale, a former community director with the girl scouts.

But sending them south above the competition derived also from their research project.Required to solve a real world problem, the girls rolled across reef balls.

A cone shaped object made of cement, sand and microsilica, the device attracts oysters and they filter pollution from the ocean as they feed.Taking their presentation up a notch, they got a grant, bought the materials and will partner with the River Project in New York City this May to deploy the ball and continue to monitor it in the future.

"You build it and they will come," said Ms.Imbriale, as she commented on the importance of the FLL for children – and especially girls."A lot of them didn't realize the potential and the future they could have before the robotic group and now half of them want to be engineers and aspiring scientists," she said. 

More kids stuff

http://expertscolumn.com/content/pearl-river-middle-school-teacher-has-design-change-gandhis-name

Mamaroneck High School Students for Senegal http://expertscolumn.com/content/senegal-mamaroneck-literacy-africa
 

Article Written by richmonetti

I write and quite well


Post Your Comment

Related Articles

  • Somers Gym Teacher Related To His Students And Will Never Be Forgotten

    Last week in Las Vegas, longtime Somers Track Coach and Phys Ed Teacher Charles Gilberti lost a extended fight with cancer and died at the age of 67. At the Lovell Street Bar and Grill, several Somers alumni and a former colleague came out on Saturday night to pay respects in a manner befitting a Somers fixture that few ever addressed as Charles or Mr. Gilberti.

  • Etsy Allows New York Therapist To Turn Sewing Hobby Into Small Online Business

  • Dream Come True In Danbury, Connecticut Delivers On The Wishes Of Seriously Ill Children

    Delivering on a wish for a seriously ill child can sometimes be a tricky proposition when an organization like Dream Come True of Western Connecticut gets a request for an African Safari or a trip to the moon. But just because a child cannot always be brought to the dream, doesn't mean the Danbury non-profit serving families in Fairfield, Litchfield and New Haven Counties stops short of trying to bring the dream to the child.

  • Squire’s In Katonah See Bring Picture In Offering American Made Apparel As Part Of Their Clothing Lines

  • Two Sided Career Of Danbury, Connecticut Songwriter

    Lara Herscovitch wrote her first song when she was eight, and as if it flows through her veins, the inclination to pen music to the guitar and piano has followed her ever since. On the other hand, turning this natural calling to a career took some circumventing across not only several career choices but also across the globe.

  • Wellness Fair And Westchester Marriot

    Last Sunday, The Westchester Marriott hosted a wellness fair that spanned Healthcare Modalities, ranging from the hi-tech to what was cutting edged thousands of years ago and across cultures to American innovators making a place for themselves today and into tomorrow.

    Among the latter would be Karen Beth, executive director of Biopro (www.mybiopro.com/kbeth). “Experts are predicting an epidemic,” she says of the real health risks of cell phone usage.

  • Chappaqua Students Roundup Sports Scene In Horace Greeley High School Newspaper

    For several years now, Horace Greeley has been putting out a school newspaper called Sports Roundup that allows students to merge their passions for professional sports and writing. Prior to last June, a staff of 10 would collect and word process their stories before running a few hundred copies through the Xerox machine belonging to the editor-in-chief's father. That procedure - even after adding the staples - just didn't sound right to Josh Rosen when he joined up as a freshman.

  • Former New York Times Editor Takes On The College Essay In Katonah, New York

    Writing a college essay that is well received on the admissions end can actually come down to some pretty uncertain variables. The reader was interrupted by a family argument, a pen runs out of ink or even this week's mid-life search for the meaning of it all. In many ways, said former New York Times editor Jack Topchik, "It's a crap shoot." Nonetheless, in retirement the Katonah resident offers 40 years of journalism experience to help local students stand out among the many and whatever unfair factors that might hurt them.

  • Vascular Associates Of Westchester In Hawthorne, New York

    Varicose veins occur to due a condition known as Venus Reflux disease. “This is a disease where valves in the surface veins are not functioning, says Dr. Arun Goyal of Vascular Associates of Westchester in Hawthorne. In turn, the blood flow is reversed and the blood pools up in distended veins instead of traveling to the heart. Once addressed with a procedure called Phlebectomy, which stripped the vein right of the leg and resulted in a long painful post operative recovery, today’s modern methods keeps the patient awake and has them up and walking the same day.

  • Learning Is A Lifelong Affair At The Hoff-Barthelson Music School In Scarsdale, New York