Pennekamp First Lego League Event

The Pennekamp Martians were selected by lottery to participate in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League California State Tournament on Saturday, December 6, 2003. Offered as part of the STAR (Science, Theatre, Arts & Recreation) after school enrichment program at Pennekamp, this team has been hard at work on this year's challenge, Mission Mars, under the direction of Gail Hayes, Pennekamp Technology Specialist.

The team competed against 48 other teams (students between 4th and 8th grades) on the Mission Mars challenge which gives each team three rounds to send a Lego robot designed and programmed by the team, through a series of tasks including deploying a ramp and exiting the home base, clearing a solar panel of debris, launching a canister, connecting habitation modules, freeing a stranded Mars Rover, completing an alliance habitation module, transporting ice cores to home base, moving boulders into a launch area and proving vehicle ability by passing an all terrain vehicle test. Here, team members get ready to cheer on their team in the final round of competition.

Two members were allowed to compete in each round which allowed two minutes and thirty seconds to complete as many tasks as possible. This was Pennekamp's final round of the competition.

Between rounds, each team was required to give an oral presentation, complete with visual aids, on a research topic they had studied. This presentation was to a panel of scientist and engineers, many of whom work for the San Diego Supercomputing Center or in the engineering departments at UC San Diego. Following the presentation, the judges asked the team members questions on the research project.

The Pennekamp Martians selected "Mars Habitation Modules" as their research topic and each team member gave a different portion of the presentation. Topics the team researched included the design of the modules and what would be in them, how the modules would be powered, how the bedrooms in the module would look, the design of the robots that would build the modules, the personnel who would staff the modules, the food and supplies that would be required and how personnel and supplies would be transported between modules. The PK Martians were selected for the "callback round" later in the afternoon and gave their presentation and answered the judges questions a second time.

Once the competition and the research presentations were completed, everyone was able to let loose and enjoy Legoland! Mrs. Hayes went boating during her short break.

At the awards presentation, the Pennekamp Martians were ecstatic when it was announced they received the Research Quality Award! Congratulations to Coach Gail Hayes and the team who competed against much older teams at this state tournament and came away with one of the major prizes! The Research Quality Award is an incredible achievement and the judges noted during the award presentation speech that they were impressed by the fact that the entire team participated in both the research and the presentation. They were also amazed by the knowledge of the topic demonstrated by these 4th and 5th grade students.