Jackson's Lego Robotics Competition

Jackson's school takes part in First Lego League, a program geared to get kids excited about science and technology.  Two times a week during the school year, the Lego robotics club met after school to work towards competition at the end of the year.

This years theme for Lego League was, World Class Learning Unleashed. In the three part competition, the teams are challenged to "redesign how we gather knowledge and skills in the 21st century. Teams will teach adults about the ways that kids need and want to learn". They chose "Terminator Penguins" as their team name this year and rocked santa hats for their team flair.

Part One: The Project

Terminator  Penguins chose to create a mobile app to teach people how to get through a future energy crisis. They educated the app users through a game called, Blackout. Players monitored energy of individual cities and created alternate power sources such as windmills, dams, or nuclear power plants. The team spent months researching and collaborating on their project which they presented to a panel of judges.

 Part Two: The Robot Games


The goal of the robot games are to build and program a robot to maneuver through a course and collect the most points. This is Jackson's favorite part and he was the head programer of the team. This year's course was much more technical than the year before and really pushed the teams to think outside the box.

 Part Three: Core Values

This was another interview with the judges to determine how well they embraced the core values of First Lego League. They were asked how well they worked as a team and how they overcame obstacles. Judges also had walked through the prep area and took note on how the teams were interacting with other teams, how clean they kept their work area and their overall sportsmanship.

The kids worked hard all year and it was a great competition. Jackson had great support at the competition this year with my mom,  my brother, Russ, Ash, and his Dad.