By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
IT MAY be where the Running of the Bulls takes place but five students from Berwick Lodge Primary will be involved in a different, and much less dangerous, competition when they journey to Pamplona, Spain next week.
The student team will leave for the Spanish city over the weekend to compete in the four-day international First Lego League (FLL) Robotics Open Championships.
The event, which starts next Wednesday, is an international competition which tests the students’ ability to design, build and program robots across four different components.
The five students from Berwick Lodge and five from Glendal Primary School in Glen Waverley have formed the Contol-Alt-Delete robotics team which won the national championships in Sydney last year and will now take on the best student robotics teams from throughout the world.
Berwick Lodge Lego Robotics and Inquiry Learning teacher Traceye Rapinett, who will be accompanying the students to Spain along with principal Henry Grossek, commended the hard work and perseverance that would see the students compete in Spain.
Ms Rapinett also thanked the robotics teaching staff from Glendal, Christine and Dan, for all their hard work in preparing the team ahead of the world competition.
“It’s exceeded all our expectations, I’m so proud of the students,” she said.
“All 10 children worked extremely hard.”
The theme for the upcoming competition is mastering natural disasters, with the Berwick Lodge team selecting wild fires as the most pressing issue for the local Victorian community.
As part of the national championships the team built a prototype Hot Spot Spotter robot, which was intended to detect trees which are likely to explode following a bushfire.
The students, aged from 11 to 13, have drawn on community groups throughout Australia to help inspire their fire preventative robots, including World Vision in relation to disaster management, the CFA in relation to dealing with bushfires, as well as the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) and robotics experts.
Ms Rapinett said she never thought she’d be on her way to Spain when she first introduced robotics classes to Berwick Lodge Primary School in 2010, influenced by the inroads Glendal had made with its own robotics classes and the new learning avenues it had opened.
“We just want to acknowledge community support behind us,” Ms Rapinett said.
“We’ve been trying hard to raise funds, within the school community and local community.
“We’re proud to be representing Australia, we’re not just representing our school but representing our country.
“There’s a lot of pride in that and we can’t wait to get over there for the kids to experience Spanish culture.”
