WPAFB to sponsor FIRST LEGO League tournaments Published Dec. 16, 2008 By Dann Andrews WPAFB Educational Outreach Office WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- The Educational Outreach Office here will co-sponsor the FIRST LEGO® League (FLL) Regional Tournament at the Wright State University Student Union, Saturday, Dec. 20. This tournament is one of ten regional state qualifying events taking place in Toledo, Canton, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati during December. More than 220 Ohio teams will compete state-wide for the opportunity to participate in the FLL Ohio State Championship at the Ervin J. Nutter Center on Feb. 14-15, 2009. The tournaments are sponsored by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Educational Outreach; the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science; the Ohio Educational Outreach Foundation; Battelle, Dayton Operations; American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Dayton Section; and Universal Technology Corporation. The Dayton area will also host the first ever FLL US Open Tournament in May 2009, when 60 teams from across the United States will bring their brightest 9 to 14 year-old students who will demonstrate their engineering and problem-solving skills, critical thinking, teamwork, competitive play, sportsmanship, and sense of community. At the regional, teams will participate in closed-door judging, where they will meet with three panels of judges who will judge their teamwork, robot design and research project. The judging portion of the competition is not open to the public. Robot table competitions will run on the main floor of the Student Union from noon until 3:30 PM. This portion of the competition is free and open to the public. Since 1988, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology, and the LEGO Group, have partnered to challenge youth teams who use LEGO® bricks, motors, gears and software to design and build robots to solve real-world engineering challenges. "Wright-Patterson has been affiliated with FIRST LEGO® since 2001, and has been the lead organization for the program in Ohio since that time," said Kathy Levine, state FIRST LEGO® League director and Educational Outreach Office Robotics program manager at Wright-Patterson AFB. "This is all about sparking imagination and a love for science in children by showing that learning and fun can go hand-in-hand." Each September, FIRST announces the annual challenge to student teams around the world. After weeks of intense preparation, the competition season culminates at high-energy, sports-like tournaments. This year's challenge, Climate Connections, encouraged teams to explore how local climate can cause problems in their own communities, and they were challenged to find innovative ways of solving those problems. The competition is judged in four areas: research project presentation, robot performance, robot design and programming, and teamwork. The highest honor will go to the team that best exemplifies the spirit and values of the program and is the strongest overall team in all four areas. For more information about the championship tournament and the Ohio FIRST LEGO® League program, visit http://edoutreach.wpafb.af.mil/ohfll.html. Federal endorsement of sponsors is not intended.