Students build skills, robot

A team of students from Newington Elementary School in Summerville thought they were having fun last fall building a LEGO robot to enter in Saturday's FIRST LEGO League Lowcountry State Regional Qualifier.

But their coaches, teachers Rene Webster and Debbie Polk, say they really were learning about math, science and engineering. They also learned how to conduct research and work as a team.

"They work on so many skills they'll use in life," Webster said.

The Newington Robo-Dolphins was one of 37 teams from the Lowcountry to participate in the event, which took place at Trident Technical College.

Event director Sam Speraw said the 16 teams that performed the best Saturday will move on to a statewide competition in February at Clemson University. The winner there will advance to the world competition, held in April in Atlanta.

At Saturday's competition, each team was evaluated in four different areas. Teams had between four and 10 members.

Teams first had to build a robot that could move across a board and complete as many "missions" as possible in 2.5 minutes, Speraw said.

Then, they had to make a technical presentation to judges on how they built their robots. Speraw said this is so that judges know the children built the robots, not their parents.

Students also had to conduct research and solve a problem on an issue related to this year's theme, "Climate Connections," he said.

Polk, one of the Newington coaches, said the elementary school's team chose to conduct research on mold. The students could relate to the topic because officials at their school dealt with mold problems this year, she said.

Lastly, the students were evaluated on how they worked as a team, Speraw said.

"The primary focus of these tournaments is on teamwork, friendly competition and discovering new ideas," he said.

But Michael Ridenour, 11, and Jackson Trigianni, 9, the two students on the Newington team who ran the robot during the performance competition, said working the robots was the best part of the experience.

Everybody on their nine-member team contributed something different to the project, they said. And they nearly were overwhelmed by the loud continuous cheers of their teammates as they sent their robot across a board to do its job.

Reach Diane Knich at dknich@postandcourier.com.