I'm excited to start another year of Lego League!
As you probably know, Legos are an awesome building material. Check out this video of the top 10 Lego Creations. However, Lego League is much more than building with Legos. In fact some students have been on the Lego League team and never touched a Lego.
The part of the competition that does use Legos is the Mission Table. We build obstacles out of Legos on our table following a design created by leaders of FIRST Lego League, an international organization. Students then use Lego's Mindstorm robotics to design, build, and program a robot that completes missions in the obstacle course based on this year's theme, Cargo Connects. The team gains points for every mission they are able to complete at a competition.
The other part of Lego League is The Innovation Challenge which involves identifying a problem related to the FIRST Lego League theme. Students are charged with the task of designing and implementing an innovative solution to the problem they have discovered.
Information on the Cargo Connect challenge can be found here.
A normal season has the team meeting to prepare for competition a couple nights a week, often Tuesday and Thursdays after school until 4:45. The team (which is limited to 10 students) usually goes to a regional competition in Superior in November. At the competition we get three chances to deploy our robot and make adjustments to its design in hopes of gaining more points than other teams. We also present our innovation project to judges. There are a couple other parts of the competition like a team group activity and a time to discuss our robot design and programming with judges. Teams that are the most successful advance to the state, national, and international competitions in the following weeks. Competitions that are further away may require staying in a hotel the night before the competition. Some years our team has been involved with competitions after Christmas Break.
Last year competitions were delayed and cancelled because of Covid. This year we have to be prepared that the same thing may happen. The FIRST organization that runs the competitions have also been working to improve their remote competition portal where we submit a video for our competitions. Weather the competition happens or not we can still have fun and gain some skills in preparing for the competition.
On October 1st, Viking will have its first Club Day. On that day the option I will be leading will be for Lego League. That will be a good opportunity for students to learn what Lego League is about. I will also use the time to make sure everyone has officially signed up for Lego League.
Meetings we plan will be on the calendar below which can be imported into your electronic calendar.