The saying that ‘Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win Championship’ became a reality recently when a team of young Nigerian kids, aged 6-10 years, from Port Harcourt, Rivers State won the Teamwork award at the FIRST® LEGO® League Junior (FLL® Jr.) International Expo in California, United States of America.
The team members include: Okechukwu Samira Peculiar; Amos Uduak and Ayeba-Enenimiete Owatarite. They were coached by Uchechukwu Odiaka and Mercy Makagni.
Recall, Enterprise Software giant SAP (#SAP4Good) and CODERINA Educational Foundation (the Operational partner of the program in Nigeria) took a leap of faith, five years ago by helping to start FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL®) in Nigeria.
The program has grown over the years and it now yielding the expected impacts. 28,000 students and 1,134 teachers have been introduced to robotics, coding and project based learning through the FLL and the FLL Jr. programmes.
The three popular programs, Jr. FLL, FLL and FIRST Tech Challenge are the world leading robotics and project based learning programmes. All three programmes are available to future proof Nigerian kids and prepare them to compare and compete with other kids around the world.
FIRST® LEGO® League Jr. is an exciting, is an entry level experiential and fun global robotics and project-based program that ignites an enthusiasm for discovery, science, and technology in kids ages 6 to 10.
The programme was developed to introduce 6 to 10 year-olds (grades primary school and early JSS) to science concepts and teamwork. The programme was created through a partnership between FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and the LEGO Group.
The advanced level programme for JSS and SSS level students, FLL® is a program for a team (comprising of 2-10) of children from ages 9 to 16 and has three components comprising of Project, Robot Game and Core Values.
Through each of these components they are tasked (working during the FLL season lasting about a period of 8 weeks) with the responsibility of carrying out research on an annual theme by offering innovative solutions to issues, Build, design and programme robots to carry out certain missions on the FLL table and also interviewed based on the Core Values of FLL – Gracious Professionalism and Competition.
