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January 10, 2009

New Hope team competes in Legos competition

By Charles Oliver

Fans packed the stands at Dalton High Schools gym and cheerleaders cheered on their school’s teams.

But the crowd didn’t come out for a basketball or volleyball tournament. They came to see the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology) Lego League Super Regional Tournament, in which 40 teams from schools across north Georgia competed in solving scientific problems and a robotics competition.

“It’s a great opportunity for kids to get together with kids from other schools and learn from each other and share,” said Marie San Nicolas, a teacher from Marietta’s St. Joseph Catholic School.

Each team there had already won a regional competition and was eager to make it through this round to the state finals at Georgia Tech on Jan. 31.

New Hope Elementary School’s Robo Bulbs — Jamison Payne, Alyson Hannah, Madison Gowin, Zack Finley, Ty Faulkner and Preston Ausmus — were the only local team in the competition.

“This is our first year (competing), so we are very proud of that,” said teacher Donnie Carpenter.

“It feels really good,” said Finley. “It’s nice to meet everyone else and see what they’ve done.”

“I feel so great because I never though we would get this far,” said Hannah.

The team has been working together for the past 18 weeks, since contest organizers announced the theme for this year’s contests: climate connections.

“When Mr. Carpenter told us about this we thought it would be so cool,” said Hannah.

The competition has several parts, including a problem-solving project and presentation. But the part that really seems to excite everyone is the robotics contest. The teams must design, build and program a robot to accomplish certain tasks.

“There’s a lot of attention paid to this (the robotics), but it’s really only 25 percent of the overall score,” said Carpenter.

The other 75 percent is based on project presentation, robot design and teamwork.

“This particular group was really close knit. The chemistry was just right,” said Carpenter.

“We learned so much doing this,” said Payne.

The Robo Bulbs spoke after they had completed two of the three rounds of the robotics contest.

“We did OK. Some of the missions we had didn’t work like we planned. But I think this next round will be our best score,” said Hannah.

Team members were tinkering with the robot as they spoke.

“Right now, we are fixing our robot because it is kind of malfunctioning a little bit,” said Finley, during a break in the competition.

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