LEGOs Help Build Future for Student Participants--One Piece at a Time!

The best way to summarize FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) is to say that it is a robotics program for 9 to 14 year olds, which is designed to get children excited about science and technology -- and teach them valuable life skills for their future. In FLL, the children do the work! And the work is fun, challenging and offers students the opportunity to program a robot using the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robot set. 

Did I say LEGOs?  Yes, LEGOs.

The FLL competition involves designing, building and programming a LEGO robot in a high energy, sports-like event. Each FLL challenge features two parts: a robot game and a project. With the help of an adult coach, teams of up to 10 children program an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field in two minutes and 30 seconds. This is the game portion of the challenge, in which both the robots and the field itself use Lego parts.

As an example, one such challenge was “Smart Move”, a transportation-themed challenge. For the robot-building portion of the competition, students designed and built a robot that would accomplish a series of objectives laid out on an 8-foot-by-4-foot "playing field," including: getting a vehicle off a ramp; going around some playing-field features but knocking over others; and going under and then over a bridge.

The stated goal is for the student teams to apply math and science concepts to real-world problems. While solving the challenge, teams also tackle how to research a problem, how to work as a team, how to make formal presentations, and other related topics.  Teams of students create solutions, advised by adults, but the intent is for students to come up with their own solutions to the challenge and make their own decisions.

Specific Core Values are the cornerstones of the FLL program. They are among the fundamental elements that distinguish FLL from other programs of its kind. By embracing the Core Values, participants learn that friendly competition and mutual gain are not separate goals, and that helping one another is the foundation of teamwork. The students are taught that gracious professionalism, discovery and having fun while learning is more important then winning.

What FLL kids accomplish is nothing short of amazing. It’s fun. It’s exciting. And the skills they learn will last a lifetime. A mere 210 teams participated in the FIRST Lego League's inaugural year in 1998, but that number has skyrocketed over the years to 14,000-plus in more than 50 countries. Now, that's a lot of LEGOs!

For more information about Louisiana FLL, visit their website at http://lafll.org/LaFLL.html .