Cyber Rays, the Cayman Prep High School robotics club win at Clearwater, FL, qualifier.

The  Cyber Rays, a team of five students from year 7 and 8 of Cayman Prep High School, competed in a qualifier First Lego League tournament in Clearwater, Florida.

The tournament was the culmination of five months of hard work by the team and its coaches.  At the end of the all-day event the team’s outstanding performance meant that they advanced to the next round with a coveted ‘golden ticket’ to the regional tournament in Tampa, FL, on February 4.

The Cyber Ray’s also won the trophy for Best Robot Performance, a significant achievement for the rookie team.  The Cyber rays are Josh Martin, Ryan Kirkaldy, Nick Crawshaw, Mike Boucher and Drew Milgate, and the coaches are Allison Smith (Teacher), David Kirkaldy and Jeff Boucher.

The event comprised a mission field with almost 20 potential missions to complete within the 2.5 minute round.  The highest score of three rounds was counted.  The theme changes every year, with this year being a ‘Food Factor’ challenge involving clearing bacteria, reversing pollution, safe transport of groceries, harvesting of corn, and elimination of virus to name but a few.  Each has to be solved by the students using the NXT-G programming language and only Lego parts and sensors.

The Cyber Rays completed nine missions consistently and successfully.  There are three additional aspects to the event.  The team also has to research, prepare and present a project on the food safety theme, with the Cyber Rays developing a solution to combat milk spoilage.

Secondly, the robot is judged in a technical session to review the process from start to final robot including lessons leaned and changes to the programme.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly the team is judged on its understanding of the FLL Core Values, with the key learning point being to always demonstrate ‘Gracious Professionalism’ and ‘Cooperation’.

Robotics is now a part of the curriculum at Cayman Prep High School using the exciting and varied LEGO NXT programmable brick system and accessory sensors.  The school programme got a big boost in June, 2010, when it sponsored Ms. Allison Smith, ICT teacher and now Cyber Ray coach, in completing five days of training at the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) in Pittsburgh.

The NREC is part of the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, a world-renowned robotics organization.  Ms. Smith, like all students at NREC, was surrounded by real-world robot research and commercialisation education and introduced to the Lego robots and NXT-G programme as a part of a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) curriculum.

Much of that training has now found its way into the Prep School curriculum.  “We started informally in September, 2010, as a club for the years 7-9,” said Ms Smith.  “In September, 2011, the school introduced robotics into the curriculum for all year 7 students”. Cayman Prep High School now has a total of 48 robotics kits (46 Lego and 2 Tetrix kits).