Bayview Glen’s Ctrl-Z Robotics Team is the Ontario East champion of the FIRST Lego League (FLL) this year. As members prepare for the FLL World Festival in St. Louis, Mo., in April, Dialogue Online found out how the school runs a successful robotics team in a School Spotlight Q&A with coach Eric Borromeo.
Bayview Glen's Ctrl-Z Robotics Team is the FLL Ontario East champion in 2012.
Q: Why did your school start the Ctrl-Z Robotics Team? A: Bayview Glen initially participated in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League (“FLL”) in 2008. FLL is a global competition in which approximately 200,000 children aged 9 to 14 participate. The school started this team to spark students’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math.
The school and the children benefit as FLL offers participating students the opportunity to learn invaluable skills that will be applicable to future careers in science and engineering.
Q: How long have you been on the Ctrl-Z Robotics Team, and why did you join?
A: I have been a parent-coach since 2009. I initially became involved because I was intrigued by the use of Lego as a tool to develop science and math concepts in children. Now, I continue to be involved because I find the interaction with students to be particularly rewarding.
Q: How can other schools benefit from having a robotics team like yours?
A: Any school can benefit from participating in FLL robotics. The amount of effort and time committed by each team may vary. Regardless of the degree of effort exerted, children will always benefit from the opportunity to apply their ingenuity to engineer, prototype, and build their robot, learn the programming language, develop algorithms, and investigate and research a problem in the community. All this time, team members develop important life skills like teamwork, time management and resource allocation.
Q: What is your advice for other schools on how to run a successful robotics team?
A: In FLL, success is not necessarily about winning. Rather, it is about learning and having fun. In my opinion, one of the keys to success is ensuring that team harmony is maintained throughout the season so that children work together cohesively in accomplishing a number of very challenging tasks which they would not be successful in accomplishing individually. Additionally, team members taking ownership over all elements of FLL, from researching and designing to building and programming, will result in strong feelings of accomplishment amongst the children. This is very rewarding to the team and makes the FLL experience one that is both fun and educational.
Q: What is involved in being a part of the team for staff and students?
A: This year’s team comprises seven middle school children from Bayview Glen School in Toronto. The regular season runs for about three months in the fall, with regional qualifying tournaments being held at the end of November or the beginning of December. Teams who perform well at the regional qualifiers advance to the provincial championships in mid-January. In preparing for the regional qualifying tournaments, teams typically meet one to three times per week for two to four hours per session.
Q: How do team members balance their time to study, work and teach with their commitments on the team?
A: Participating in FLL requires significant commitment on the part of students. Since all the team members lead balanced lives, participating in sports, music, etc., the children need to manage their time effectively. When schedules for team meetings are being developed, each team member and his/her family needs to be flexible so that potentially conflicting schedules of other children are accommodated.
Q: What kind of students do well in this team, or are interested in robotics? Do you get a diverse mix of students, female and male, of all abilities and background?
A: While robotics is an important part of FLL, there are, in fact, three elements on which teams are evaluated: 1) Robotics—teams must design and build an autonomous robot to complete various tasks within the allotted time; 2) Research Presentation—teams must research a problem in its community and create an innovative solution to solve it, and 3) Teamwork—FLL emphasizes teamwork and good sportsmanship. As there are a variety of aspects to FLL, teams ideally comprise students with different strengths. Some children can offer strong research and presentation skills, while others may have an aptitude in engineering or programming. When these diverse skill sets are brought together, the result is a stronger team. With regard to gender, males and females appear to be approximately equally represented in competition.
Q: What was the key factor in the Ctrl-Z Robotics Team’s accomplishments, including being the Ontario East champion of the FIRST Lego League this year?
A: The key factor in this year’s result is the significant amount of time devoted by each of the team members. The children exerted great effort, often working late into the evenings and over weekends, to perfect their presentations and develop their robot. This effort has paid off for the children.
Each season, the team has enjoyed some form of success. This year, in addition to the overall strong performance at the provincial championships, the children’s practical and innovative food safety solution to detect liquid milk spoilage during transport, using a gelatin-based indicator, has been a highlight.
Q: What do students and staff on the team hope to accomplish in the future, in addition to winning such events?
A: In the immediate future, the team would like to proudly represent the province at the upcoming FLL World Festival in St. Louis, Mo., by performing well across all of the elements, described above. The upcoming event in which the team will be participating is the FLL Robotics World Festival in St. Louis, which is being held from April 25-28, 2012. Our team is now one of five teams representing Canada to compete against more than 80 international teams at the festival. To prepare for this, Ctrl-Z’s strategy is to basically continue what it has been doing thus far, specifically, having fun, continuing to refine and perfect the research, robotic technical and teamwork presentations, and improving/redesigning the robot, its attachments and the program so that the robot becomes more repeatable and better able to accomplish tasks quickly and accurately.
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In School Spotlight, Dialogue Online features your private school’s innovative projects, programs and accomplishments. Have an idea for this column? Email us at editor@ourkids.net
