LRC Team "Century Strikers" wins Illinois FLL Champions Award

Post date: Jul 27, 2013 2:6:23 PM

Mount Prospect, January 20^th,2013 – A Mount Prospect team of 6^th, 7^th and 8^th graders called "Century Strikers" combined teamwork, research and creative thinking to surpass 79 other teams in winning the Champions Award at the FIRST^® LEGO League (FLL) Illinois State Tournament that was held in Arlington Heights on January 18^th & 19^th. The Lincoln Middle School team also earned the opportunity to participate in the FLL World Festival, to be held in conjunction with the FIRSTChampionship, April 24-27, 2013 at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis.

FIRST^® LEGO League (FLL) is an international program for 9 to 16 year-old children (9 to 14 in the U.S. and Canada) created in a partnership between FIRST^® and The LEGO Group in 1998 to get children excited about science and technology – and teach them valuable employment and life skills. Children work alongside adult mentors to design, build, and program autonomous robots using LEGO MINDSTORMS^® technologies and create an innovative solution to a problem as part of their research project. The competition season culminates at high-energy, sports-like tournaments.

The Century Strikers, from Lincoln Middle School, gathered with 80 teams from across the state at Forest View Fieldhouse in Arlington Heights to celebrate science and technology and present their solutions to help Senior Citizens remain Independent, Engaged and Connected, as part of the FLL “Senior Solutions™” Challenge. The competition was judged in four areas: project presentation; robot performance; technical design and programming of the robot; and teamwork, with a consideration of the FLL Core Values.

The children participate in the Challenge by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a playing field (Robot Game) within a set time (2½ minutes) and developing an innovative solution to a problem they have identified (Project), all guided by the FLL Core Values. In order to win the Champions Award and proceed to the National level, a team must present and perform well in all four parts of the FLL Challenge.

As part of this years challenge, the team researched problems that Seniors struggle with. They discovered that vision issues are a major cause of Seniors mistaking their medication. The team developed a solution that would place QR Codes on medicine bottles, along with a tablet application that reads the QR codes and displays the prescription information in a large font that can be easily read by seniors.

Project coach, Kerrie Pasternak says, “It’s been amazing to watch these nine boys learn to communicate, listen and work together as a team, letting everyone’s voice be heard. Their selfless attitude and determination to complete every task just show’s what these kids are capable of when given the opportunity.”

Lincoln Middle School Principal, Jason Kaiz, says, “Our FLL club is ideal for what a club should represent, an extension of the skills the students learn in the classroom. The members have an opportunity to build on skills in math, science and communication that may not happen otherwise. It has been amazing to see what has been created by the hard work of the students over the last few months.”

Nine boys make up the Century Strikers team, 3 from the 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade classes. The “Strikers” are one of two teams from the Lincoln Robotics Club.

Currently in its thirteenth year, FIRST^® LEGO League has had its biggest season ever, with more than 20,000 teams in more than 70 countries competing in hundreds of Qualifying Tournaments and Championship Tournaments. Eighty-four teams will have the opportunity to participate at the FIRST^® LEGO League World Festival.