Building and coding talents combine to tackle global water issues (LEGO League)

The FIRST LEGO League Leinster finals, which encourages teens to think like scientists and engineers,  took place at the DCU’s Institute of recently with the Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton, TD officially launching the event.

Students from the Dublin and Leinster region came together for the day-long tournament to demonstrate their robotics and coding skills and showcase their solutions to tackle world water issues as part of the research theme Hydrodynamics.

 ●       Rosmini Community School, Drumcondra were crowned the FIRST LEGO League Champions for their project Hydroheads.

●       St Columba’s College, Whitechurch won the Robot Game category.

●       The Disney Droids team from St Mary’s Secondary School, Glasnevin won the Robot Design category.

●       The High School, Zion Road won the Research Project category.

●       The Water Warriors team from St Mary’s Secondary School, Glasnevin won the Core Values project.

The event, which encourages children to develop skills in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) in a fun and innovative way, was organised by the Lego® Education Innovation Studio (LEIS)and Learnit with support from Science Foundation Ireland.

In advance of the finals, each team spent over four months designing, building and programming an automated robot using LEGO Mindstorms, which they then had to put into action at the tournament,  to meet a number of challenges in a robot game. Each team’s robot was presented to a panel of judges who assessed the project on design, coding skills and mission strategy.

Among the solutions in the Hydrodynamics research project was the development of an app to measure water usage; the creation of a branded water bottle for TY students in order to reduce the use of non-reusable water bottles and a modified tap to sound an alert when it has been used too much.