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Robots converge in Austintown
14 teams compete in FIRST LEGO LEAGUE District tournament
By Bob Jackson
AUSTINTOWN
It was like the Olympics for smart kids.
That’s what members of Austintown Middle School’s “Team Anti-Matter” said of the FIRST LEGO League District Tournament on Saturday at AMS. Overall, more than 250,000 students from 80 countries participated all over the world.
FLL is a robotics program for students age 9 to 14, designed to generate interest in science and technology, as well as teach them employment and life skills. The intent is to create an interest in engineering careers in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields.
“So many kids these days look up to sports stars as heroes,” said Andy Yantes, event coordinator. “The idea here is to see if we can elevate engineers to that star level, like athletes.”
Fourteen middle-school teams took part in the local competition, with the top five teams advancing to the state tournament in Dayton. Each team had up to 10 members with one or two adult coaches. Yantes said teams came from as far away as Cleveland and Columbus to compete in Austintown.
Each team had to build a robot, using a LEGO Mindstorms kit, and put the robot through a designed course of action. They also were given a challenge to come up with a creative, innovative method of teaching others. They were judged on their robot’s performance, their teaching project and how well their efforts conformed to the core values of FLL.
Team Anti-Matter was composed of eight AMS students who created a virtual-reality method of teaching history.
“It allows students to experience things through their own eyes instead of reading about it,” said team member Jacob Westmoreland. “It’s definitely more involved than reading a textbook. It’s more interactive, and it makes it easier for the student to learn.”
Team member Alex Giovannone said the team uses the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States as an example.
“People who were alive during 9/11 are going to remember it and know more about it than people who just read about it in a book,” he said. “Our project allows people to experience history as if they were there.”
Westmoreland said the students will have to build a video “library” of historical events that will allow participants to see, hear, and experience those events as if they were there.
The team even gave its robot a name, Dwiggens.
“We heard the name once in some studies of history, and we liked it,” said Giovannone.
Also representing AMS was the team S.M.A.R.T. Cookie. S.M.A.R.T. stands for sytematic mind augmentation reality and technology.
For its project, the group designed a cellphone app to help students with attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder learn math.
Team member Taylor Baer, 13, said the program is called “Smart Math,” and uses a sixth-grade math curriculum. For each chapter successfully completed, the student earns one ingredient toward a cookie recipe, in keeping with the team’s name.
When all chapters are successfully completed, the student earns a “virtual” cookie that he or she created through their efforts.
“If you don’t pass, the mixer explodes in the screen,” she said, laughing.
The app will also take the student back to any problem areas that were not passed and offer additional instruction and help.
“My mom is a teacher, and I’ve seen the struggle she has with teaching kids who have ADD and ADHD,” Baer said, noting that math is a difficult subject for those students to learn because it’s based mostly on lectures. “They like hands-on stuff. They like to move and tap instead of just sitting and listening.
Baer and team member Brandon Malahataris, 14, said S.M.A.R.T. Cookie recently pitched the learning app to officials at the Youngstown Business Incubator, and were met with encouragement.
“They said that if we can find a verified market for the app, they will help us create it,” Baer said.
The students will have to contact 100 schools in six or seven states to determine whether there is, indeed, a market for their product.
Though the competition aspect of the tournament is certainly a challenge, Kyle Anderson of Team Antimatter said there’s more to it than that.
“It’s just a fun atmosphere to learn,” he said. “Our main core value is that we are a team, and we live by that.”
No local teams advanced to the state finals Saturday, but the AMS teams were recognized for their efforts. S.M.A.R.T. Cookie won the Project Award, while Team Anti-Matter took home the Judges’ Award.