Sometimes the road to solving the world’s problems begins with a child’s imagination and LEGO building blocks.
A group of Oxford fourth and fifth-graders are a prime example of this as they may have single-handedly solved the Great Lakes? long-standing zebra mussel problem and won a trophy in the process.
The Rockin? Robots ? a team consisting of eight students from Oxford Elementary and one Leonard student ? earned a trophy for ‘Creative Project Presentation? at the LEGO Fever 2 competition held Nov. 22 at Carman-Ainsworth Middle School in Flint.
Forty teams participated in the qualifying tournament for the FIRST LEGO League, a global program created for kids ages 9-14 to get them excited about science and technology.
According to Barbara Johnston, the team’s adviser and a fourth-grade teacher at OES, the competition consisted of two parts.
In one part, the students must research a problem, devise a solution, then come up with a clever presentation for the competition’s judges.
‘They tell the kids money is no object and don’t worry if it doesn’t seem technologically feasible now because technology’s changing so fast,? Johnston said.
The Rockin? Robots decided to tackle the problem of zebra mussels, an invasive aquatic species that’s spread throughout the Great Lakes.
The densely-growing freshwater mussels (native to the lakes of southeast Russia) clog pipelines, cover the underside of docks, boats and anchors, kill native mussels by out-competing them for food and are believed to be the source of a deadly avian botulism that’s killed tens of thousands of birds in the Great Lakes since the late 1990s.
Zebra mussels spread all the way down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and have even been found in Florida, according to Johnston.
To solve this ecological problem, the kids designed a robot call the ‘Bob -500? (pronounced ‘Bob Negative 500?) and built a cardboard model of it.
‘It goes underwater and it’s basically a vacuum for the zebra mussels,? Johnston explained.
After the Bob -500 sucks them up, it chops them up and leaves the pieces in its wake.
‘The shells are biodegradable and fish can eat the meat,? Johnston said.
Rather than do a Power-Point presentation or something else predictable for the competition, the Rockin’s Robots took a more unique approach.
‘They wrote a play to present the information and the judges really liked that,? Johnston said.
For the other part of the competition, the kids designed, constructed and programmed a robot made of LEGOs to accomplish certain missions and in doing so, score points.
Beginning in September, Johnston said the team met three times a week, about two hours per session, over an eight-week period to prepare for the competition.
‘It was a quite a commitment on their part,? she said. ‘They really worked hard on it.?
Inspired by the LEGO team at Lakeville Elementary, Johnston formed the Rockin? Robots at the beginning of this school year.
‘The teacher over there kept telling me how great it was for the kids,? she said.
Competing in these LEGO robotics events teaches students to utilize the math, science, problem-solving and teamwork skills they learn everyday in the classroom.
‘Out of the top 10 Oxford grads last year, five of them were on the (high school’s) robotics team,? Johnston noted. ‘Looking at the research, most of these kids end up going into science, technology or math. We’re just trying to encourage that.?