Nathan, Y7, Century Park Campus

This year, I am participating in the ‘First Lego League’ Extra Curricular Activity (ECA) run by Mr. Horwood, the Secondary Head of Computer Science at our campus. The First Lego League ECA is centered around robot building; however, there are many other parts of the ECA that are important, too. 

There is another area of the ECA that is also important, called ‘The Project’. The Project is focuses on the value of our theme (Animal Allies). The main objective of The Project is to recognize a problem with humans interacting with animals, and to develop solutions.

Teams build robots out of Legos, and use specifically-designed Lego batteries and wires that are connected to the moving parts of the robot. Before the robot goes into motion, other people put codes into the robot using computer software to make it move around. The coders put specific details in their coding so that the robot can complete missions. These missions are related to the Animal Allies theme. Missions vary from moving shark tanks to different places, to putting bees into a designated beehive area, and more.

So far, the First Lego League ECA has been really fun. This ECA is a time to build robots with Legos, and currently the Century Park Robotics Club is preparing each other to participate next year in the First Lego League Robotics Competitions. For now, Year 8’s compete as a team against another team made up of different year levels. For the past few lessons, my team has been focusing on coding the robot to accomplish high point missions, and whomever gets the most points in the end from completed missions wins. This has been both challenging and fun.

I hope that the contest will turn out well for the best team, and that the fun will be long lasting. Go First Lego League! Thank you Mr. Horwood!