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Irish Girl Guides aim for a place in UK/Ireland IET FIRST LEGO League Final
Dublin, 14/05/2021 – Members of Irish Girl Guides (IGG) from across Ireland will compete in the IET FIRST LEGO League RePlay Challenge Virtual Regional Tournament tomorrow [Saturday 15 May] hoping for a place in the UK/Ireland final in July.
The twenty-seven Guides (aged 10-14) and Senior Branch members (aged 14-30) have created and designed innovative solutions to this year’s FIRST LEGO League RePlay Challenge – to find ways to get people more active through play.
They will compete in five teams – The Smarkels, The Four Musketeers, The Clonmel Cyclones, The Lego Park Rangers and The Step Sisters. Each team has spent the past few months preparing for the tournament, including designing, building and programming their own automated robot using LEGO Education Mindstorms. They did all this online throughout lockdown.
Monica Keogh (14), a member of The Step Sisters and of Portmarnock Senior Branch, has greatly enjoyed taking on the RePlay Challenge. “First, our team identified a problem in our local area related to getting people more active through play,” she says. “We decided to focus on getting everyone more active while waiting at the bus stop.”
Her sister and team-mate Cora (17) explains: “We then designed a solution for our community – installing fun exercise equipment and simple exercise posters at bus stops to encourage everyone to be more active, shared our ideas through an online survey and by emailing key groups to seek feedback, and learned from their responses to improve our solution. We created a video presentation about our ideas and will share this with the panel of reviewers on Saturday.”
Monica and Cora were both members of the IGG Sustainable Sisters team that was placed Second Overall Champions at last year’s FIRST LEGO League final, which took place in the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Swords, shortly before the first national lockdown. They were to go on to compete in an international FIRST LEGO League competition in Greece last summer but that had to be put on hold because of the pandemic.
This year’s teams have also designed, built, and coded a LEGO robot to solve the RePlay Robot Game missions. With their specially designed and crafted LEGO attachments, teams have 2.5 minutes to solve as many missions as possible. The first round of virtual Robot Games took place last weekend in advance of the final.
The teams demonstrate their FIRST Core Values throughout the season – applying TEAMWORK and DISCOVERY to explore the challenge, INNOVATE new ideas about their robots and projects, show how their team and their solution will have an IMPACT and be INCLUSIVE and celebrate by having FUN in everything they do.
Also taking part in tomorrow’s online showcase will be 34 other Guides, Brownies (aged 7-10) and Ladybirds (aged 5-7) who have completed the Explore and Discover Season Playmaker Challenges for younger innovators. These challenges also involved solving real-life problems with LEGO designs.
IGG Chief Executive Officer Claire Barkey says, “The IGG LEGO Robotics programme is yet another example of how IGG is leading the way for young girls to have the opportunity to engage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), encouraging them to pursue STEM subjects in school and STEM careers by providing practical, hands-on experience in a fun environment. We have already seen many of our youth members take up college courses and careers in STEM as a result of this programme and our other STEM programmes too.
“The FIRST LEGO League competition is generously supported by The IET – The Institution of Engineering and Technology, Dublin City University’s LEGO Education Innovation Studio and the LEGO education specialist LearnIT.”
Irish Girl Guides welcomes youth members from age five-plus and adult volunteers from age 18+. No previous Guiding experience is necessary and ongoing training and support is provided. For further information, see www.irishgirlguides.ie or tel: 01 6683898.
ENDS
Notes for Editors:
Irish Girl Guides has approximately 11,000 members. Guiding started in Ireland in 1911 and operates throughout the 26 counties with 1,600 volunteer leaders providing an informal educational programme of fun and challenging activities that foster confidence and leadership skills in girls and young women, enabling them to develop to their full potential and to become responsible citizens. Girls from age 5+ can choose to earn a wide range of badges, including Community Action, Climate Action, Cultural Diversity, Disability Awareness, Drug Awareness, Engineering, Europe, Science Investigator, STEM and Global Traveller. www.irishgirlguides.ie
FIRST LEGO League
FIRST is an acronym for ‘For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology’ and the FIRST LEGO League encourages young people to think like scientists and engineers, developing practical solutions to real-world issues.