The Vintage Lego Robotics League was created to inspire students to pursue dreams of engineering careers. What started over 7 years ago as a small group of students, and a parent who was able to visualize what the program could be, is now something that makes Vintage Magnet stand out from many other schools.
A team of faithful Vintage alumni parents runs the VLR league. Roger Orvis, Luis Alacron, Vaughn Sandstrom, and Tomas Deleon have been with the league for the past 7 years. They have helped create, modify, and run the league to ensure that all of our students who participate come away with problem solving skills, knowledge of programing, and engineering skills. Mr. Bullis has been involved with Vintage Lego Robotics for the past 7 years in various capacities, this season as the coordinator of the program.
The league has been meeting every Thursday night since January. During this time, teams collaborate, create, and design robots that complete certain task that have been outlined. Also during the Thursday night practices, lead coaches have been assisting teams that need help with programing and problem solving. Thursday night practices were created so that the teams coach can get help from the lead coaches and to collaborate and problem solve with other teams.
The league has 3 trials. The first 2 trials are meant to be more of a learning experience than truly a competition. During the first 2 trials, the lead coaches assist as needed. This is also where the kids are taught the rules of the trials, and where new strategies are also formed. The final trial, which will be held on May 7th, is a culmination of everything that the team has learned. The coaches are all required to sit in the audience, and the teams come up to the front and in 2 minutes the teams must execute as many tasks as they can. This event is special because it is when we get to see all the hard work come together, and see how each team has grown since the beginning of the league. We invite you to come on May 7th @9am! It will be a lot of fun!
The future of Vintage Lego Robotics: As many of you know technology is advancing every minute is seems like. Vintage has always prided itself on being on the cutting edge of technology. Next year (2016-2017) we are hoping to change things up a bit and expand to what is called VEX robotics. We will hopefully be partnering up with some funding options to get this started next school year. In the mean time check out the vex robotics site, (http://www.vexrobotics.com/) and check back for details. We also want to thank Mrs. Mourao for her continued support of the Robotics program.
For more details about the league go to: http://www.mrbullis.com
Click here to check out some photos of our second LEGO Robotics tournament.