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SDA School gives Lego robotics team warm sendoff
Students, faculty, and staff of the Saipan Seventh-day Adventist School gave its Lego robotics team a warm sendoff yesterday wishing them good luck and to represent the CNMI well. The team will be competing in the 10th Annual North Pacific Regional Robotics Challenge in Walla Walla, Washington.
Competition—sponsored by the Adventist Robotics League and Walla Walla University’s Edward F. Cross School of Engineering and held in cooperation with the First Lego League and the Junior FLL—is set on April 10, Sunday, at the Walla Walla Valley Academy in College Place.
Sixth grader Rannon Palacios and fifth graders Sion Park and Miles Timmons are the students who are traveling to Washington along with coach Melanie Strout. Cory Lee and Harvey Zhang are the other members of the team.
Palacios, Park, Timmons, and Zhang made a brief presentation of what they researched and prepared about this year’s theme or mission of recycling and reduction of trash. The presentation is what they will show the judges in the competition.
Delegate Gregorio “Kilili” C. Sablan (Ind-MP) also gave the team pins that have the CNMI and U.S. flags.
Strout, who previously coached another Adventist-run school in Alaska that won the ARL nationals, said that although this would be the first time that Saipan’s SDA school will be competing, the experience of building the robot from scratch would help them develop their analytical thinking skills and at the same time appreciate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Every year judges and organizers give different topics and for this year it’s about trash and debris, where the students will also be making a presentation on their research of turning waste to
The mission is all about recycling, the reuse and reduction of trash. Teams earn points in completing each mission and get deductions for failing to accomplish it.
The annual robotics challenge gathers all the Adventist schools in North America where the CNMI is part of the region. The Saipan SDA team will be competing against other students from the fourth to eighth grades.
The ARL was formed in 2002 to promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics to students.
