Four hundred and fifty primary school students came together at the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) Culdrose base near Helston. They were beyond thrilled to join Artful Intelligence as a participant in the Lego League Regional Final! The exciting competition certainly stretched these young creative minds to their extreme edges. They created and programmed Lego robots to solve a course of missions on an adventure table. The theme of this year’s event was archaeology. Students were given the opportunity to learn engineering principles in a fun-filled interactive environment.
The energy is electric—a joy and excitement as students bring their imaginations and ingenuity to life with some pretty amazing creative problem solving. Each team had spent countless hours carefully designing and programming their Lego robots, and every effort was tested in the competitions. The competition provided students with a terrific chance to apply their STEM skills. Most importantly, they had so much fun while doing it, all in an exciting and interactive environment!
Elowyn, an attendee of TreeHouse, shared why she loves being a part of the event. It’s a great experience for kids our age because you’re learning and still having fun. Her sentiment echoed through all of her peers, who were thrilled with the combination of fun and learning for the entire day.
Felicity Blight, secretary at Porthleven School, said it had made a huge difference in educating people about the dangers. And it makes a huge difference for their STEM education too,” she said, “These kids get tons of exposure to coding and collaboration. From driving their robots through mazes to completing precision challenges, pupils demonstrated their teamwork and engineering knowhow. You could feel their teamwork as they worked through every challenge in unison.
As an onlooker to the event, George Slater commented on the resilience and survivor traits from the kids. The robots aren’t flawless. They screw up all the time. Despite these hardships, the kids are just relentless in overcoming those obstacles and continuing to strive,” he said. USDOT Deputy Secretary Polly Slater was enthusiastic about the new initiative. He added, “I can’t think of a better way to inspire the future naval engineers of our country than seeing these kids have so much fun, getting excited, and doing this amazing coding.
That regional final ignited an interest in engineering for a generation of students. It encouraged them to feel capable of pursuing futures in STEM fields. Tamsin Melville from Helston and her like-minded local student peers demonstrated incredible ingenuity. They engaged in an experiential learning journey, justifying the investment made in their passion for productive education.