Citywise do themselves proud in Irish Lego League finals

By Aideen O’Flaherty

TWO teams from Citywise Tallaght competed in the Irish finals of the 2017 FIRST Lego League in Galway last Saturday.

One of the teams secured an award for best presentation, while the other team came fifth out of 25 competitors in the robot game portion of the league.

The FIRST Lego League, a robotics competition where competitors have to develop projects related to a specific theme, was this year given the theme of ‘animal allies’.

The older group of students, whose group name was The Wooftones, created a project that focused on human and dog interactions with the aim of preventing animal abuse, which was inspired by a visit the group made to the DSPCA.

The younger group of students, who went by the name The Stubborn Ones, developed a project about donkeys and came fifth in the robot game section of the league.

The students had to present their project on front of three judging panels, who firstly assessed the research project, the second judging panel then looked at robot technology while the third panel assessed the core values utilised during the course of the students’ work.

Chris Smith, IT and Academic Manager at Citywise, told The Echo: “The league was a fun-filled event, there were lots of lights and music.

“We were live broadcasting on the internet during the competition, there were lots of well wishes from people in Tallaght through our facebook page, which gave us great encouragement.

Mr Smith said the winning team were “shocked and overjoyed”, and he added “the younger team are raring to go for next year, and want to replicate the older team’s success.”

The Irish Finals event of the FIRST Lego League was run by Galway Education Centre and sponsored by SAP Ireland.