Monday, December 10, 2007

FIRST LEGO League, Central Texas Championship

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being a volunteer at the 2007 Central Texas FIRST LEGO League Championship Tournament.

It is such a joy to see teams of 9 - 14 year olds working together, solving design challenges, learning about technology and helping their communities.

FIRST LEGO League is an international organization, and I highly recommend getting involved. There are many opportunities for volunteers, including mentoring teams and helping at events.

The FIRST organization talks about promoting science and engineering and making them "cool" to kids. After going to an event like a championship tournament, you realize that they are really doing it. The kids have so much fun while learning valuable skills that will help them throughout life.

Of course, I also take a bit of pride in knowing that most of the kids are using software powered by LabVIEW!

4 Comments:

Blogger lvurs said...

Hey Christina, right on with your comments to the FIRST LEGO League. It has always been my interest to get young people in- and outside of educational institutions to learn while doing things. I think the power of LabVIEW graphical programming is extremely suited to get kids involved with making software in a fun and inspiring way.

Regards from Switzerland where there is also a local LEGO League.

Urs

1:03 PM, December 11, 2007  
Blogger Alan said...

I co-coached my son's FLL team last year. I had no prior experience with FLL outside of the amazing keynote by Dean Kamen at NI-Week 2006. Overall it was a good experience, but I was disappointed in the competition. The competition results were largely based on non-engineering requirements. The overall winner for the competition that I attended was a group of fourth graders that had a very experienced coach.

3:43 PM, December 11, 2007  
Blogger Christina said...

Urs and Alan,

I'm so glad to hear that you are supporting FIRST LEGO League!

Alan, I'm sorry to hear you were disappointed with the competition. Please send feedback to your local FLL coordinator if you have suggestions for improving it! I hope your son and his team had fun, learned a lot, and weren't discouraged from participating again.

- Christina

11:47 AM, December 14, 2007  
Blogger Roopa said...

For the third consecutive year, The College of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, National Instruments (NI), the National Instruments Foundation, Silicon Laboratories, and SpawGlass teamed up to give more than 300 students ages nine to 14 the opportunity to develop robots and explore the benefits of nanotechnology for the Central Texas FIRST LEGO League Championship Tournament on Jan. 6. This year, NanoKnights, a team of home-schooled students from San Antonio, received the prestigious Champion’s Award for presenting the best technical robot design and representing FIRST LEGO League values in its work. The National Instruments Foundation will sponsor the team to compete nationally at the FLL World Festival in Atlanta this April.
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Roopa

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10:11 PM, August 15, 2008  

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