The Lego Wizards from GJE was one of two LKSD teams to advance to the Alaska FIRST LEGO League* championship in Anchorage. Congratulations, and good work, to the Lego Wizards from Gladys Jung Elementary School and The Ayaprun Eagle Blimp Company from Ayaprun Elitnaurvik.
After months of robot programming and research on cargo solutions, 23 qualifying teams from around Alaska battled it out at the competition table to see whose robot could score the most points on the challenging field. The teams also presented their Cargo Connect innovative solutions project to the judges and answered complex questions about their robot design and innovative solutions.
The Lego Wizards won the Rising Star Award for their Scan N’ Skip project.
The team’s solution to combat lengthy lines and wait times at post offices across the state utilizes a barcode system to help both postal workers and customers quickly retrieve mail. A barcode slip is created and given to the customer. The slip is scanned by the customer at the front desk. The scanned barcode is displayed on a large monitor in the back room, visible to the postal worker.
The postal worker retrieves the corresponding package, which is put on a rolling conveyor belt that travels to the front counter. The customer is able to pick up their package and leave the post office.
The Scan N’ Skip offers a solution that will not only save the customer time in receiving their mail but will also help the post office manage and maintain an accurate inventory of packages waiting to be collected.
The team’s coach Nicole Smith helped guide the team to victory. “Our biggest issue was reliability,” Smith said. “But between our regional qualifier and state, we worked hard on making the robot be more reliable by using the color sensor to follow lines — backing up in the walls to align the robot straight again — and conceptualizing how to put mission programs together to be more time efficient.”
Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the team worked hard and was dedicated to practicing before school throughout the season, learning about programming and coding.
Great work, Lego Wizards!
*FIRST LEGO League is a STEM program for kids ages 4-16. Kids in grades 4-8 compete as teams in the LEGO League Challenge. They engage in research, problem-solving, coding and engineering-building, and programing a LEGO robot to navigate missions on a game table. The teams also research a project and identify and solve a real-world problem.
This year’s FIRST LEGO real-world problem was Cargo Connect, and kids were asked to invent new ways to transport, sort, and deliver cargo to destinations. Students must perform both parts of this challenge while demonstrating the LEGO League
Core Values:
●We are a team.
●We work to find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors.
●We honor the spirit of friendly competition.
●What we discover is more important than what we win.
●We share our experiences with others.
●We display gracious professionalism in everything we do.
●We have fun.