It’s crunch time for students coding and creating at North Windy Ridge Intermediate School. After weeks of building innovative apps and robots, 18 students will compete Saturday in the regional FIRST LEGO League robotics challenge at Central Wilkes Middle School.
“This year’s theme is ‘Unearthed’ with the purpose to assist archeologists in their profession,” explained teacher Russell Thompson. “After they present their innovation ideas and answer questions from judges, the focus turns to the competition table. Each of our two teams will have three attempts to get their robots to do as many tasks as possible in two-and-a-half minutes, based on the codes the students have written.”
Holly is a 6th grader who helped her team develop an app for identifying artifacts such as arrowheads that people might find on their property. It ties in to a form that reports the find to the state of North Carolina.
“I’ve worked with my mom on building a website, and found out that I really like coding,” she shared. “I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to learn even more about coding here at school and now have a chance to present what we’ve done at the competition.”
This week, students have been practicing their presentations for Mr. Thompson, media center coordinator Rachel Brillisour, and BCS technology facilitator Wendy Fusco. They’ve also had a chance to present to an archaeology professor at Warren Wilson College and answer questions from him, to be better prepared for judges at the competition. Teams worked with an engineer from Thermo Fisher Scientific as well, who helped them refine their robot runs.
The two North Windy Teams, the WindyBotz and the HawkBotz, will compete against nearly two dozen other teams this weekend for the chance to advance to the state competition in Greensboro this December.
