LEGO robotics team builds its way to national success Students need to be on their game to master the FIRST LEGO League Challenge. And piecing together creativity, coding and presenting skills, along with a block of experience, proved the winning formula for Kaiapoi North School as they were crowned national champions. Everything is awesome for students at Kaiapoi North School after winning the FIRST LEGO League Challenge 2020. “It’s a tough competition and everyone was delighted,” said teacher and coach Brayden Johnson, “After they missed their opportunity to travel to Australia due to COVID – after placing third last year – they put in a lot of work and relief was a word some of them used to describe how it made them feel. “They’re a very dedicated group of students. Many of them put in work outside of the regular weekly sessions we have at school to prepare. They see being in a FIRST LEGO League team as a privilege and strive pretty hard to ensure that FLL continues to be viewed in this way.”
Two-part challenge
Held last December at Te Matauranga School in Auckland, the national competition attracted 48 teams from around the country, among them two from Kaiapoi North School, the experienced Tech Vengers and first timers Tech Knights. “Each year FLL releases a challenge the involves both problem solving and a robotics element,” explained Brayden. “Part one is a practical project that involves students coming up with a solution to a real-world problem and using experts in their field to prove their theory could work. Students create a presentation of between 5-10 minutes to showcase to the judges on competition day. There are also presentations of around five minutes that cover both the LEGO Core Values and the robot design and creation. Part two is all around using the EV3/SPARK PRIME Robots.” The 2020 challenge was around keeping people fit. “Our Tech Vengers team created an app called INCLUSIVE that encourages competition by awarding points for exercising. QR codes were added to our
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INTERFACE 108 SEPTEMBER 21
TEAMWORK: TECH VENGERS (BACK) AND TECH KNIGHTS (FRONT)
school fitness equipment and there was a large focus on making the game accessible to people of all abilities. “The Tech Knights used Virtual Reality to create a game to get people moving and doing fitness, like running on the spot press-ups, etc.”
Improving performance
Kaiapoi North became involved in FIRST LEGO League in 2017 when students worked together with staff to find an event that allowed them to push themselves in robotics while being able to also apply STEM knowledge through the project version of the event. Each successive year has seen the school’s team improve its performance, finishing third in 2019 and winning in 2020. “When we originally started a team, I needed to shoulder tap students to take part. However, with a profile that comes with placings and wins, we had more and more interest from students wanting to take part. Now there’s a trial for people to join. We also began receiving some fantastic support from local businesses, which is vital for us to be able to afford to get to Auckland for the Nationals.”
Brayden adds that he’s incredibly lucky to have support from parents like Tracey Moore and Jo McCurrie, and especially Dean Sole, who runs weekend coding sessions for students and “always goes above and beyond”. “Last year saw us expand to two teams – one experienced and one beginner. Our experienced team came away as national champions with our junior team finishing third overall in the robotics portion of the competition. Both the 2019 placing and the 2020 win should have qualified us for international travel and representation but, unfortunately, COVID put an end to that.” Although FLL allows for between 4 and 10 students per team, there are eight students in each KNS team “We choose this number as it allows for enough space in a Van for coaches plus students when we travel.”
Talk to professionals
The teams meet every Monday from 3pm to 4.30pm to prepare and work on their projects. “Our students give up an afternoon to come together and brainstorm their ideas,
