SYLVANIA, Ohio — A local elementary school robotics team is going international.
The Ottawa Hills school STEM team will compete in Japan this spring for the First Lego League Open International robotics competition. The event will feature more than 80 teams from 50 different countries.
Lego League has been pushing kids to experience engineering and science in a fun way since it was formed back in 1998. Coaches with the team believe this is a great way for kids to learn about real-world science, technology, math and engineering applications.
"They're learning how to program a computer," coach George Lathrop said, "and send that program to the computer in the lego set and make it do different things.
The team is presented with a physical board of challenges. Members must work to build, design and program a robot to complete tasks like flipping a switch, stacking blocks and more.
Unlike traditional sports, the entire team is constantly talking to each other on the fly.
"I like all the creativity and all like everything we get to invent and experience," Ottawa Hills fifth grader Quinn Culler said, "and like there's so many things we get to enjoy."
"That's my favorite part coming up with general idea and then constantly narrowing it down," sixth-grader Sahil Parikh said, "doing minor things to make it a finalized product that actually works."
In addition to the robotics competition, the group also gets scored on an innovation project they pitch on a real-world problem. The team chose to tackle the issue of fires caused by animals who chew wiring. Talk about thinking out of the box, the group proposes insulating wiring with ghost pepper to repel animals.
"The best part is just watching the kids discover," Lathrop added, "watching them find a challenge and figure a way to solve it."
And coaches said this activity encourages kids toward STEM careers. Future employers take notice too.
"They like kids who have had this experience said," coach Dhaval Parikh said, "because they know these kids know how to problem solve and they know how to work as a team."
The team will continue practicing until the competition in Japan from May 7 to May 10. It is looking for any area businesses or people to sponsor some of the kids for the trip to Japan. If interested, you can reach out to the Sylvania STEM Center at tom@sylvaniastemcenter.org