Eight weeks of Lego engineering robotic design and testing provided a leading advantage for seven Kepner Middle School students. The OpenWorld Learning Lego Robotics team will be advancing to the FIRST Lego League Colorado state competition on Dec. 11 at Auraria Campus.The "Robo Factors" team coached by Kepner Site Leader LeAndrea Walter, assistant teacher Raymond Martin, and volunteer Christy Anderson won the Judge's Award at the Colorado School of Mines Qualifier event on Nov. 21. Forty-three teams participated in the event.
The Judge's Award is given to the team that shows outstanding performance in all four judged areas: robot performance, project solution, robot design and teamwork. This is quite an accomplishment for a rookie team. OpenWorld Learning volunteer Christy Anderson also received the Outstanding Adult Coach award.
The students spent the day at the Colorado School of Mines competition where they presented their MarioBoot project and prototype solution to a foot amputation from a staff infection inspired by a fieldtrip to visit an orthopedic surgeon at Western Orthopaedics. The project was designed in claymation and presented in Frames.
Judges presented a team challenge for the students to complete in the teamwork category. The technical interview covered the robot design and the team explained how they had created, built and tested their robot. The robot was programmed to complete 13 challenges as part of the 2010 Body Forward competition. Each team had three 2.5 minute rounds to complete as many of the 13 challenges as possible. Visit www.coloradofirst.org to learn more about FIRST Lego League.
OpenWorld Learning provides afterschool and summer camp computer programming, robotics, stop-motion animation, graphic design and leadership classes to over 600 DPS students each year. The robotics curriculum is licensed by the Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST).
More information and volunteer opportunities may be found at www.openworldlearning.org or by calling 303-832-0066.
