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Lego League Competes at Surfside
01/16/10 - 07:23 PM
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Kids from all over the Florida panhandle got together today at Surfside Middle School to compare robots.

It’s the very first regional Lego League tournament.  Lego League is an engineering competition with two different parts:  a research project and an obstacle course. Kids built their robots under specific criteria and put them through series of tests. Judges awarded points based on the performance of the robot and the critical thinking skills involved by the kid creators.

Judges like Andrew Bouchard, an engineer with the Naval base on Panama City Beach, says it’s a great way to encourage kids in the areas of science and math:  “This is an opportunity that I never got. When I was growing up, first Lego League didn’t exist, at least where I was. I didn’t get to participate and I didn’t really discover the breadth of what was available in robots, the different opportunities that existed to solve these different problems, to experience these different challenges and to get involved in something like this.”

Teams who placed in today’s competition will go on to compete in the state tournament in Orlando.