So this year, #4 started a new school. It’s little bitty- with about 120 kids K-12, and has rawther stringent academic expectations of the students. This is good. He needs stringent and at his old school it was essentially “oh he’s sm art so we’ll let him teach himself while we try to teach the kids who don’t learn as quickly” so he was kind of sloppy with his work and all. not here. Nope, rather than being at the top of the class he is solidly in the middle and has to work hard for that spot.
Anyway, the school has a Lego Robotics team. When #4 hears the word “lego” he kinda perks right up because the boy, he does love him some legos. So he joined the team. Only, it’s not a bunchof kids sitting around buildling lego things. The team designed a robot to perform a specific set of tasks (as determined by the National Robotics Something-or-other), programmed (!!) the robot to do the tasks, and then competed against other schools, most of them much larger than this one thus with a more experienced and skilled set of team members. The teams were allowed 8 students between the ages of 9 and 14, and the coach said “most teams field strictly 14 year olds,because of experience and such, so don’t expect too much from this team, since we are all 11 year olds with the exception of Andrew, who’s 10”.
Today was the Robotics Competition in Savannah. I didn’t go because I have a nasty cold. Terry and I did, however, go to the Dry Run yesterday and saw what-all they were doing. The competition involves 2 parts. first is the actual robot competition, where the built-by-them and programmed-by-them robot is put through a series of tasks and judged onhow well it performs them in a set amount of time. The second part is a skit performed by the team that features something Biomedical. Their skit was of a soldier who lost his eye in battle and had it replaced with a prosthetic eye that had electrical implants in his brain. the kids were questioned on their knowledge of biomedicine and what was in the realm of possibility in the near future, relating to their skit.
Well (see me swell with pride…see me get a little giddy) #4’s team, his small inexperienced team from a small backwater private school…came in FIRST in the Robotics Division (that is, the performance of their robot) and SECOND overall! That means in a month they get to go to Warner Robins for the regional competition!
WOOT WOOT!
Because it really is personal... 