All-Ireland Lego League joy for Scoil Treasa girls team
PUPILS from a national school in Firhouse have been crowned the overall winners at the FIRST LEGO League All-Ireland final.
The winners are an all-girls team from Seán Smyth’s sixth class in Scoil Treasa, Firhouse.
The winning team members include Kayleigh O’Brien, Tara McMahon, Ava O’Dwyer, Molly Campbell, Caitlin Wylie and Hollyann Farrelly.
Talking about the engineering competition, teacher Seán said: “Half of it has to do with Lego and designing a robot and the other half is a research project where the girls had to identify their own problem.”
Four teams from Seán’s class entered the Leinster regional event in DCU in late February.
“On the day, one of the teams from my class, GPS (Girls Play Sports) won the robot game [with their robot called Rachel], and placed second overall in the competition,” said Seán.
The problem that the team identified was that not enough girls their own age are playing sport and to solve this problem they designed their own website.
“They have spent the past eight weeks researching girls’ participation in sports and have designed their own website [called Local to You] to encourage young girls to sign up to organised sports clubs nationwide,” said Seán.
The website that the girls have designed, is for both boys and girls, and is a phototype website, so is not live now.
“On the website there are several tabs, you can select a county, there are a range of sports you can select from.
“For example, you can click on basketball and there is a link to Google Maps where you can find the contact details of basketball clubs in Dublin,” said Seán.
Naturally, Seán and the girls are delighted with their amazing achievement.
“The girls are in shock, they were underdogs, they were one of the youngest teams.
“To come out on top of 24 teams is really incredible,” said Seán.
What makes the girls achievement all the more noteworthy is that this is their first year entering the competition and they also had no experience with coding beforehand.
“It’s a massive achievement,” said Seán.
Seán himself specialised in Digital Learning in college and was aware that there was a STEM grant available from the Department of Education to take part in the competition, which is open to pupils who are aged from 10 to 17 years old.
As overall winners, the GPS team and Seán will travel to Bodø, Norway in May to represent Ireland at the European Open Championship.
However Seán believes that this could cost approximately €15,000.
“We need to fundraise. They are six incredible girls, it would be great to send them to Norway,” said Seán.
The aim of FIRST LEGO League is to encourage children to think like scientists and engineers, developing practical solutions to real world issues. The science and technology challenge was aimed at 11 to 16-year-olds.
