Lin Wozniewski, left to right, Lynda Bodie, Matthew Benus, Joe and Mike Markovich, Mary Jean Champion, and Ray Liskey

Teams getting ready for annual LEGO Challenge

Contributed By:The 411 News

Talk to Ray Liskey, assistant principal at Warren Harding elementary school in Hammond and he is emphatic that participating in the FIRST LEGO League Challenge is the best afterschool activity for elementary and middle school students.

Liskey and other elementary and middle school robotics coaches were at Indiana University Northwest Friday night for a workshop on the 2016 Challenge. IUN is the host for the November 20th qualifying tournament that will send its winners to the December 10th state championship in Ft. Wayne.

FIRST LEGO League Challenge is a world-wide competition that encourages children to explore science, technology, engineering and math (the STEM fields) using Lego building blocks and a programmable controller to create a robot. Each year brings a new challenge. The 2016 challenge, Animal Allies, uses everyday experiences of interactions between humans and animals that the robot will imitate.

Fifteen missions make up this years’ challenge. A guide dog helps a blind man cross a street, a shark is transported in its tank, bee keeping, and cow milking are among the missions. One of the tasks requires competing teams to work together to complete a mission.

Each team is judged and points awarded on robot performances, a research project associated with the missions they chose to complete, and a description of how they worked together as a team.

Lin Wozniewski, IUN professor in chemistry and physics is the tournament director and presented Friday’s workshop. “Coaches here tonight are newbies. They are just getting started and need more help,” she said. Thirty teams usually participate in IUN’s qualifying round.

Lynda Bodie is in her third year as coach of Thea Bowman’s LEGO team. She was among the newbies at the clinic and this year plans to expand her team’s involvement beyond the November Tournament. Three hours a week is recommended for the challenge, but some teams put in extra hours during weekends.

Matthew Benus, an IUN assistant professor in education is the tournament’s co-director. “With our focus on college and career readiness, the Lego challenge offers early experiences in working collaboratively as a team, understanding written instructions on how to do things, and writing,” he said. “They do a lot of writing and revising.”

Munster’s Markovich family – Joe, wife Darlene, sons Mike and Chris, and daughter Holly – led the workshop. Joe is an award-winning LEGO Challenge coach. Mike intends to study engineering at Purdue Calumet, following in the footsteps of Holly and Chris.

“Surprisingly, our elementary student teams get to the state championship more than our middle school teams,” Liskey said. “They are balanced, scoring in all three categories.” Liskey is also an award-winning coach and hosts the annual Hammond Invitational Robotics Tournament that will be held November 12th.

FIRST LEGO Challenge has four levels: Junior FIRST LEGO League (ages 5-8), FIRST LEGO League (ages 9-14), FIRST Tech Challenge (grades 9-12), and FIRST Robotics Competition (grades 9-12).

Story Posted:09/26/2016