rblog

For the past several months, Matthew, Yishan, and Austin have been meeting every Tuesday afternoon to work on their entry in the Junior First Lego League competition.

A few words of explanation are in order. The First Lego League is an organization that provides an opportunity for kids to take on a challenging Lego project and to share their ideas with others in a fun, cooperative environment. For kids under 10, there is the "Junior" version - similar concept, but simpler project. The project this year was to choose a room in the home and perform an energy audit - where does each of the objects in the room get its energy. We chose the kitchen and learned that it used a combination of gas, electricity, and battery power. We learned about compact fluorescent lights and we found where gas lines entered the home and we found the underground electrical systems and checked out the electrical panel in the garage. We researched how our electric company generates power - and it is quite a "green" company with something like 75% of the energy coming from renewable sources.

With all that knowledge in hand, it was our job to model the delivery of a particular power source to an item that used it. The kids chose to model wind power delivering energy to the microwave and with that the design/building phase of the project began. We learned lots about how to design projects. In fact, we started with the basic concept of designing something, not just building it ("Plan your work; Work your plan"). We learned (often the hard way) the "Steve Jobs wisdom" about staying true to the design, even if one of the team members doesn't like it. We used design tools (Lego Digital Designer) to prototype and communicate various options. And of course we built with Legos. (Well, the kids built, I didn't). Then we learned how various departments help and hinder - like when our Legal Department (the rule book) determined that one particular design was illegal. We learned about deadlines and tradeoffs and hiring the right people. We learned about doing the "right thing" and the "right now thing". Of course, by "learn" I mean we talked about it and wrote it down on white board. I don't expect anyone really remembered it as they were usually too busy goofing around - assuming that we even got to Legos that day since Lego building only happened after homework was done.

As the day of the Expo grew closer the kids put together their posters of explanation - eschewing any use of color and in general disdaining any type of marketing (they are true engineers these kids). And then it was time for our trip to Buena Vista High School (an amazing high school) for the show.

There were 14 teams and each team was interviewed by 4-5 judges to see how well the kids could explain their construction and the overall project. The kids got plenty of opportunities to see the other projects and answer questions from the other kids. Our project was unique in its use of the motor to power the wind turbine (others used a hand crank) and our modeling of underground wires (as we don't have overhead wires in Alameda).

Matthew, Yishan and Austin were proud to win one of the two awards for "Innovative Construction" but mostly they were happy to spend the day together and have fun. We are going to continue our weekly meetings, moving to Lego Mindstorms NXT - a basic robot building system that will introduce the kids to programming.

PS - Photos are thanks to Yung Chen (Yishan's mom) - more available upon request.