IU Northwest to host 6th annual FIRST® Lego® League Indiana Qualifying Tournament Nov. 18
At least 32 teams will vie for spots at Indiana Championship Tournament
Thursday Oct 11, 2012
Indiana University Northwest will host the 6th annual FIRST® Lego® League Indiana Qualifying Tournament, one of the state’s largest, in Savannah Gymnasium on Sunday, Nov. 18. The annual event, which encourages young students to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math, will take place on campus between 1 and 6 p.m.
At least 32 teams, primarily from Lake County, will compete at IU Northwest. Each team will compete for a chance to advance their team to the Indiana Championship Tournament taking place in Fort Wayne, Ind., in December.
FIRST® Lego® League is an international competition in which teams of elementary and middle school students work as a team to program a NXT Lego robot. The two-part challenge is based on a real-world topic. Teams of up to 10 children, with one adult coach, participate in the challenge by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field and developing a solution to a problem they have identified.
The theme for this year’s tournament is “Senior Solutions.” Students will learn about how to maintain a good quality of life for seniors and assist them in solving problems seniors may encounter in their day-to-day living.
Students will compete in four areas: Teamwork; Project; Technology; and Performance.
For Teamwork, teams will demonstrate their ability to work collectively as a group to reach their goal, and in Project, teams will reveal their robot design.
Competing in Technology, teams will show judges how they have learned to program the robot they have built out of Legos®, and in Performance, the students compete for points on a competition table using their programmed robot.
The public is invited and encouraged to attend the free tournament.
Additional teams who wish to register for the tournament must do so online between October 15 and 19. Visit http://www.iun.edu/lego-league/. For additional information on FIRST®, please visit http://www.usfirst.org/.
The Savannah Gym is located at the southeast corner of the main campus parking lot at 33rd Avenue and Broadway in Gary.
For information about parking at IU Northwest, including a new practice for issuing temporary visitors’ permits, please visit http://www.iun.edu/parking/.
For more information, contact Linda Wozniewski at (219) 980-6637 or lwoz@iun.edu.
