Cara Loverock
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, January 30, 2008

YELLOWKNIFE - Five students from Yellowknife Catholic Schools headed to Edmonton last weekend to test their robotics skills at the First Lego League Alberta Championship, and came back with a silver medal.

Brent Currie, the instructor of the Lego and robotics course, said his team competed against 32 other teams and came in second for robot design and tied for sixth in the table competition.

Billy Medernach shows one of the robots being used in the First Lego League Alberta Championships in Edmonton. He, along with four other students from YCS schools, are taking part. - Cara Loverock/ NNSL Photo

"I'm pretty proud of those kids," said Currie. "They stepped up and did a great job."

Fraser Oliver, Julianna Neudorf, Levi Jones, Billy Medernach and Pippa Kennedy, were chosen from students in Grades 7 to 9 at St. Patrick's high school, St. Joseph, and Weledeh, to head south for the competition.

Speaking before they left for Edmonton, the students said they were feeling confident and looking forward to competing.

"It's going to be a really good experience and a great learning opportunity," said Kennedy.

Lego robotics sounds deceptively simple, Currie said.

"The lego is the easy part," he said. "The programming is where it starts to get complicated."

The way the competition works is the robot is given different goals, such as moving a solar panel onto a Lego house.

If it achieves the goal, then the team gets points.

In addition to programming robots, they also had to put together a power point presentation on alternative energy, and chose solar energy as their topic.

"I like programming and seeing how it affects the robot ... if it achieves the goal," said Medernach.

Currie said roughly 30 to 50 students go through the Lego robotics program each year.

"It gives them a taste of where they can go with robotics," said Currie.

He said those skilled in the field have the option of choosing almost any job in engineering or mechanics.

The kids participating in this year's competition were chosen after exploratories were held to see which were most advanced in the activity.

This is the second year the school has participated in the competition. Last year's team came home with bronze.