Ely Lego League team wraps up successful season

Sue Sitter/PCT Members of the Ely Elementary School Lego League team pose for a photo next to the table holding their robot course. From back left are Parker Wright, Anthony Smith, Helen Medalen, Ryzen Gunville, Tucker Filler and Oaklynn Dillow. From front left are Gabe Schneider, Tami James-Woodrow, Jackson Childress and William Schell.
The Ely Elementary School Lego League team celebrated a successful season Jan. 31 with a pizza party and discussion about its trip to regionals in Minot the weekend before.
“We competed at Minot State University at Swain Hall,” team member Anthony Smith said.
Team advisor Andee Mattson said the Ely team competed against 13 other teams from central North Dakota Jan. 28.
The competition combines skills in science, technology, engineering, art and math to solve problems that will help communities.
Teams use Lego blocks to build a course a programmable robot moves through to complete various tasks to demonstrate how their solution works. Team members write programs in computer code to carry out the tasks.
Jackson Childress, another member of the team, said the project consisted of three parts: innovation, core values and the robot challenge.
“The innovation project was trying to innovate something to make a better world and try not to use as much electricity as we do, and try to get solar power,” Childress said. “We created a solar-powered fan that charges your phone, and it can also keep you cool and work as a fan.”
Team member Tami James-Woodrow said, “Core values is like teamwork, fun, inclusion, discovery. It was describing what we should do, like we should work together, and with inclusion, we should work together to find out (solutions to problems). “
“And with fun, we should work together and do art projects,” she added.
“When we built our robot, it took a couple of days to program it. And once we programmed the information on the laptop to use the information on our table, we gave it things to do,” Smith explained. “It had to go across the board and push something or pull it for a little bit and go back.”
“We did pretty well,” Childress said. “We didn’t make state, but we got kind of close.”
“I think our core values and innovation project really helped balance us a little in there,” Childress added. “Our robot didn’t do so well, but Mrs. Mattson and me and Anthony fixed one problem for this one thing it had to do, because it was pulling it instead of pushing it. If we had (fixed the problem) before, we could have made state.”
Smith agreed. “The arm was catching on the energy unit, so it wouldn’t move, and it wouldn’t get the energy unit on the first try,” he said.
The team members all agreed that in the end, they had done a good job.
“I think we did great,” Childress said. “We have a great team and great people around us, so, I think we did great.”