By Mr. Zambrano
miguelz@isb.ac.th
Dear MS Parents,
Last Friday, Feb 13, 2015, a team of ISB students attended the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) World Class Challenge Robotics Tournament hosted by Thailand’s FLL Partner company called GAMMACO. This event took place at Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University. The “Pantorz” Team participated with 9 children and two adult coaches (Mr. Zambrano and Mr. McGovern).
The Challenge had three parts: Project, Robot Design, and Robot Game. This season the project was based on World Class. What is the future of learning? ISB students had to develop a solution to a problem they had identified and find a better or more innovative way to help someone learn. Their FLL WORLD CLASS Question was “How could we improve the way that someone learns how to make friends in a new environment?”. As international students, the team felt this was a very important question to answer as they move a lot and receive little training to adapt to new places, environments, etc. Their solution contemplated the use of a Virtual International Playground (VIP), a safe virtual environment to make mistakes and be safe while taking risks to make friends and practice social skills. There is no “command Z” or Undo in real life, so VIP can be a place to re-visit your sims and keep trying! Unfortunately the projector at the university was not working well, so students had to present using the laptop, which made it hard for the judges to appreciate their solution.
In the Robot Game students built and programmed their autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field and explained their robot design to judges. This is one of the highlights of the competition as two teams compete against each other to score the most points. ISB students managed to complete various missions in the 2.5 minute rounds. For the Robot Design, the team had 5 minutes to present and explain all the functions and attachments in their robot followed by questions from the judges.
Overall, it was a great day. We arrived back at ISB around 6:00 PM all tired but happy. We don’t know the results yet but feel that great learning took place and many ideas have inspired the team for next year’s competition.
Please, congratulate the following students for taking part in this amazing experience.
- Muhammad Irfan Akbar
- Asad Ali
- Misha Z. Gagnidze
- Santi Kimpara
- Brian Daniel Lewis
- Benjamin M. Maston
- Aman Jwalant Parikh
- Napat Sriworakun
- Anika Prakasen
Here are the links to some videos and photos of the event.
Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/isbmiddleschool/sets/72157650448912389/
Getting Ready for the Robot Game – video: https://youtu.be/gn3i5DGu0l0
Robot Game – video: https://youtu.be/nJlfgPu227I
Project presentation – video: https://youtu.be/r-E7l2rGDEk
For more information, visit https://www.firstlegoleague.org/challenge/2014fllworldclass