Saturday, January 9, 2010

Today- Brooklyn FIRST LEGO League Qualifying Event

COME ON DOWN

I've been involved in FIRST LEGO Robotics in NYC and nationally - even internationally (as a referee in Tokyo two years ago), since I retired. The tournaments have grown each year as more schools get involved. It is one of the best things I've done. My role is to liaison with the teacher/coaches.

FIRST puts on tournaments all over the world. FLL is for ages 9-14. There are over 16,000 teams in every neck of the world. All competing in the same type of events. The season culminates with the World Festival in April. I went to one in Atlanta and it was quite an experience.

This year's theme is SMART Moves, relating to building and programming robots using LEGO that can navigate through various transportation issues. See more here.

Today is the first of 5 borough tournaments to chose teams that will qualify for the NYC championship at the Javits convention center in March. The Brooklyn tournament is taking place at Polytechnic/NYU in downtown Brooklyn on Jay St. It is free and open to the public and you get to see what all the excitement is about.

I'll be there most of the day so stop by and say hello.

Tomorrow is Staten Island at Wagner College. Next Saturday (Jan. 16) is the Bronx event at Lehman HS and the week after (Jan. 23) is Queens at Aviation HS followed the next day by Manhattan at CCNY.

Follow events at my robotics blog: http://normsrobotics.blogspot.com/

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Forget Legos, we are dealing with forced school closings. Prioritize.

Anonymous said...

If you haven't got anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all.

Robotics is seriously important to many children in this city and is poised to revolutionize curriculum and interest in science and technology. It might not be relevant to you, but there are plenty of people who will benefit from learning about it.

Anonymous said...

Many, many children got interested in science, math and technology because they had FIRST Lego Robotics in their school. My son is one of them. He has been in FIRST FLL, FTC and FRC teams and now... his first college choice is MIT. As a single parent with very,very low family income I know firsthand how good school curriculum can motivate children to work hard and to like going to school everyday.