Robotics Reflection – A Student’s Perspective

Robotics Reflection

By Tharushi

I wanted to try robotics at the start of the year because I wanted to experience something different. It was hard at first because there wasn’t many people I knew and building the robot and programming it was a bit complicated. However, after a few weeks, I had got to know three others from Robotics Club and I had learnt much more.

I found out that the students from Robotics Club had the opportunity to take part in a robotics competition: FLL (First Lego League). Already, I had completed many missions and co-operated well with my team, so I decided to participate. I created a presentation at home and talked about how kids need and want to learn in the 21st century in front of Robotics Club. A few weeks later, I discovered that I got chosen, along with Shaini, Imogen, Dillon and Dhiluka, my new team.

Over the next few months, we worked, built and programmed tirelessly to prepare for the competition. We completed tasks at home, did missions after school, presented to students and staff members, met up at lunch times, organised Fuze video chats and discussed important things o Edmodo. It was hard work, but we were determined and focused. Our team motto was “WE WILL TRY!” and then “WE WILL TRY TO TRY!” and then “WE CAN DO THIS!” Our play was well-practised. We met up during holidays and weekends. Most importantly, we worked as a team, co-operating and encouraging each other.

The FLL World Class Competition was an AMAZING experience. We competed against 21 other schools. It was held in King David School in Armadale. We rushed to the practice room to check our programs several times. It was interesting to see how other robots were constructed and how they completed missions. The hardest thing to do was position the robot. We failed many times because of that, but it was still a learning experience. We were proud of our journal; the judges seemed to like it. At the end, we won the Core Values Award, for showing Gracious Professionalism and coopertition. We were proud of our work and all agreed that we had learnt a lot.

I am definitely going to continue robotics next year and will try to be in the FLL team next year. My goals are to complete more missions and use the robot sensors more to gain precision and accuracy.

Robotics has been very fun this year!

Robotics Club Australia Clinches Core Values Award At Melbourne Regional First Lego League Tournament

Robotics Club Australia Clinches Core Values Award At Melbourne Regional First Lego League Tournament

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robotics Club Australia’s school team competed against 21 other robotics teams in the 2014 Victorian Regional First Lego League (FLL) Tournament.

The team were all rookies in this competition and comprised of students from Grades 3 to 6. The team did very well and impressed the judges with their reflections, their research project and technical judging.

At the end of the tournament, the team clinched one of the top few FLL awards which was the Core Values Award!

Core Values Award
Inspiration, Teamwork & Gracious Professionalism®
1. Celebrates a team that is empowered by their FLL experience and displays extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit.
2. Recognizes a team that is able to accomplish more together than they could as individuals through shared goals, strong communication, effective problem solving and excellent time management.
3. Recognizes a team whose members show each other and other teams respect at all times. They recognize that both friendly competition and mutual gain are possible, on and off the playing field.

Well done team! We know you will bring these values with you for the rest of your journey of life. We celebrate with you 🙂

The Importance Of Working Together

Behind a complicated but successful space mission, an invention or anything else, there is usually a TEAM. This team behind the success would have spent hours working together on problems, modifications, challenges and solutions.

Some of those hours would have been a breeze, some would have been tough and some would have just been banal. However teams would often have to work together to overcome those problems. From an initial idea to the final product, there would have a range of emotions such as excitement to frustration to disappointment to sheer happiness. Every team would have its own story………

At Robotics Club, learning how to work together with others who are of different temperaments can sometimes prove a challenge for kids. Sometimes, they get on like a house on fire and at other times they just wish to walk away from the team.

There are no promises that things would always be smooth sailing, but the difference at Robotics Club is that while things can get tough, we will be with them through it.

The kids at Robotics Club are a cheerful lot. They have their challenging moments and are still working through their team issues from time to time. However, what sets them apart from others is their attitude of being willing to look for solutions to improve teamwork – that's just them being real and learning problem-solving skills and how to support their team.

"Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. – Henry Ford