Students design robots, beneficial technology

[Billfred]

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate...l/10829744.htm

About 1,000 elementary and middle-school students packed the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center exhibit hall Saturday in a robot-building challenge with a serious message.

As they used Legos to build robots that could pass a series of agility tests, the students were reminded of the importance of technology to the physically handicapped.

The third annual “First Lego League” tournament brought 99 teams from all over South Carolina to Columbia.

Their challenge: to use Lego pieces and a computer program designed by Lego to assemble versatile robots and guide them through several challenges.

To move a CD to a ring on the surface of a table, students tried sticks, ramps, claws and various other Lego appendages, with mixed success.

In the middle of the arena, teams took their places at competition tables, eight groups at a time, to successfully complete as many challenges as possible in two minutes and 50 seconds under the watchful eye of judges.

Relatives and waiting teams sat on bleachers in front of huge monitors watching the action.

Behind the bleachers, two teams from W.G. Sanders Middle School in Richland 1 scrambled to put together their plan.

They were trying to get the robots to do what they’d been doing the past three months, said Luevera Caesar, a teacher at the school and the team’s coach.

One of the team’s key programmers came down with mononucleosis before the competition, so other students had to pick up the slack.

But another infection was spreading among the group: impatience.

“The biggest challenge for them is sticking with one thing and following it through,” said James McIntosh, a world-history teacher. “If one part falls off, they want to start over.”

The robots might not have performed exactly as they’d planned, but the students were exposed to the larger lesson.

In addition to their robots, students had to present a project to judges offering some sort of innovation to help the disabled.

Jenia Ford, a 13-year-old seventh-grader at Sanders, designed a model of a school to serve students with various disabilities.

“Not all doors are big enough for people with wheelchairs to get through,” she said. The doors in the school she designed were extra wide.

Miss Wheelchair America, Juliette Rizzo, came down from Washington to amplify the message. She led the students in a chant of “ADA is here to stay,” referring to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The scientists and teachers helping put together the event hoped students would come away from the experience enthusiastic about technology.

“When you learn science and math, you can use it to help people,” USC provost Mark Becker told the students.

Reach Drake at (803) 771-8692 or jdrake@thestate.com.