By CASEY NEILL
PRIMARY school kids from Dandenong North are headed for a robotics competition in Sydney to take on teens from around Australia.
The Wooranna Park team is also doing its bit to keep residents in bushfire-prone areas safe.
It finished third in the Victorian leg of the First LEGO League (FFL) competition this month to earn a place in the national final, and took home the Core Values Award.
“It’s the third year we’ve entered the competition and they’ve just exceeded all expectations,” robotics teacher Mic Lowne said.
“We’re a little school in Dandenong North. It was a huge weekend.
“I think I heard the phrase ‘We’re going to Sydney’ roughly 2000 times.”
FLL is open to students aged 9 to 16 years old. Teams have to design, build and program a LEGO robot to complete a series of challenges in two minutes and 30 seconds based on a theme, which this year was Nature’s Fury.
They also need to identify problems associated with the theme, develop solutions and present them to the judges.
The nine grade 5 and 6 students and three teachers from Wooranna Park started on the task eight weeks ago.
“Since then they’ve worked lunchtimes, as many classes as possible, weekends … ” Mr Lowne said.
They created a bushfire plan app for their ‘solution’ component, which has received positive feedback from the CFA.
“They’ve said that if it does what we are hoping it will do when it’s completed, they were very happy to help us promote it,” Mr Lowne said.
The team hopes to have the app available for download in time for the national contest.
“We’ll be competing against about 26 other teams from around the country,” Mr Lowne said.
“The robot run wasn’t our strongest part of the day. A few things went wrong for us. The kids pulled together and came up with some really innovative ideas to fix it.
“If everything goes our way, we could be one of the best teams in the country.”
The FLL National Tournament will be held at Macquarie University in New South Wales on Saturday 7 December.
Call Wooranna Park Primary School on 9795 2007 to help the team get there.
