First Lego League prelims

First Lego League has a presence in 80 countries and TT will be the first in the English-speaking Caribbean to have such a programme.

The initiative is being supported by Shell Trinidad Ltd, the official 2016 Cycle Social Investment Partner.

The preliminary event is scheduled for Saturday with 20 teams comprising of 120 participants from primary and secondary schools taking part.

Ten school teams will be short-listed for the championship event in March 2017. The winning team will be flown to Houston, Texas, for the World Festival in April 2017.

The challenge is titled “Animal Allies” programme and is geared towards participants ages nine to 16-years-old and will utilise theme-based challenges to engage participants in research, problem solving and engineering.

For their project, teams will also solve a real world problem.

Throughout this experience, participants will be encouraged to operate under the First Lego League’s signature set of core values that place emphasis on friendly competition, independent learning and community involvement.

Working in teams of up to ten children and guided by two adult coaches, team members have approximately ten weeks to build and programme an autonomous robot that will, in two minutes and 30 seconds, complete pre-designed missions. They will also have to analyse, research and invent a solution for a given assignment and present it.

The participating teams are Christus Rex Anglican Primary School, Gypsy Danger (Debe High School), El Dorado West Secondary School (Junior & Senior Team), Maple Leaf International School, East Mucurapo Secondary School, NorthGate College, Palo Seco Secondary School, St Anthony’s college, Trinity College East, Trinity College Moka, Tranquillity Secondary School, Woodbrook Secondary School, the Robotics Club, Tech Club, Team X, U-Tech and the 6th Trinidad Sea Scouts (St Mary’s College/ CIC).