are interested in attending college and 80 to 90 percent end up in a robotics career; according to FIRST. Allen points out that Robles is a Title I school and is 95 percent low income. “Our students may not have had Legos or computers in their homes,” she said. “This is their first exposure to them.” Allen’s teams have done well in competition, one year advancing as high as the state-wide competition and securing a trophy. The lessons students learn in the Allens’ Lego robotics program are ones they take forward. She also noted the program helps get young women in particular interested in robotics. “The girls here, their faces light up because they didn’t know they could program a robot.”
The Core Value: FUN! Jo McCawley, a product manager with software company Strata, has had a similar experience with her daughter Madelein. She’s a student at Dewey Elementary School in Evanston, Illinois, and one of six members of the school’s most senior Lego robotics team – Royal Flush. The students get very creative. “If you want your robot to do things, like push [objects] or use claws, you add Legos,” McCawley said. Royal Flush has built two robots named Ace and King. And Ace and King have a lot to do. This year, as prescribed by FIRST LEGO, Royal Flush is engaged in a set of 30 missions all oriented around “the human water cycle” – all the tasks on the team’s board are dedicated to this and this is all in preparation to compete in the FIRST LEGO League Regional Tournament. The students program Ace and King to do things like “move across a board and flush a toilet, or put out a fire, or move a little Lego well to a specific location on the board,” McCawley said. “It’s very hard to have the robot do that and not break it.” According to McCawley, the kids love
doing all this, and, more importantly, they’re learning a lot from it. The team has a stated list of core values that reads like a dream for any teacher or parent. They are as follows: • We are a team. • We do the work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors. • We know our coaches and mentors don’t have all the answers; we learn together. • We honor the spirit of friendly competition. • What we discover is more important than what we win. • We share our experiences with others. • We display gracious professionalism and “coopertition” in everything we do. • We have FUN!
"Our students may not have had Legos or computers in their homes. This is their frst exposure to them."
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CompTIAWorld | SPRING 2018
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