Lego League Incursion 2024
The purpose of the workshop was to introduce students the challenging, complex yet critical role programming and algorithms play in our lives. Students were given a range of challenges such as: personalizing their name for their respective robot and getting the robot to make simple drawings and shapes such as straight lines, rectangles and triangles, using simple block codes.
Students’ were then tasked with creating their own code to get the EV3 to navigate and manoeuvre around a series of maze blocks. It was great to hear the cries of joy and pride as students managed to successfully code and move their robot.
Coding is a great metaphor for critical thinking: as students were given a first-hand experience of overcoming problems – as one wrong block code and your robot won’t do what it should! Students were encouraged to de-bug any problems in their lines of code; strive to push their robots to the limits and be curious as to why it was moving the way it was. Considering most students had no experience in coding or using EV3 robots – it was impressive to see how quickly their technical and coding skills developed over the course of the workshop.
Lastly, on behalf of Ms De Masi and myself, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the amazing year 8 helpers – Christian (SM7), Yannick (AN6), Liam (AN1) and Jacob (SE1) – their enthusiasm, professionalism and coding skills were invaluable in supporting all students over the course of three days. These four students are not only great ambassadors for computing and coding – but also displayed their true Servite spirit as they performed all duties with a servant’s heart. Great work, boys!
– Mr Good and Ms De Masi
