Dubois Ram Explorer Robotics

This is the first year Dubois Schools have participated in FIRST Lego League. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an international organizations that provides students age 9-14 an amazing opportunity by combining the excitement of athletic competition and the challenges of building and problem solving. Students design, build and program Lego robots to solve each year’s challenge. In addition to the robot challenge, teams research the challenge topic and develop a presentation that shares their solution to a real-world problem.

I (Coach Kristi Hibbert) had worked with Lego Robotics during my master's degree at Pepperdine University. I wanted to participate in Wyoming's FIRST LEGO League but lacked the necessary funding to start a team. Marty Gale, the director of "Lights On After School", felt that robotics would be a great addition to the activities offered by Lights On. She scraped together just enough funding to join FIRST, buy our challenge field and buy three NXT Mindstorm Robotic sets. I also applied to the Dubois "Never Sweat Recreation Board", who funded team t-shirts for each student as well as hotel and meals for travel to the third annual Wyoming FIRST LEGO League competition which was held at the Casper Events Center on December 5th and 6th 2008.

Fifty-eight teams from schools across Wyoming participated. The competition is not broken down by size of school, experience or age. Each team enters the "pits" competition area on equal standing with all the other teams.

For our inaugural year, I decided to open Lego Robotics to our 4th, 5th and 6th graders at the Dubois K-8 building. We started our practices on October 28th and practiced each Monday and Wednesday from 3:30 to 5:00 P.M. We had nineteen students participating but only could take twelve to Casper. In the robotics missions portion of the competition our high score was 75 points which placed us 26th out of 58 teams. We are waiting for the other three scores that round out the competition. Twenty-five percent of a team's score is on teamwork, 25% is on the presentation and research component, 25% percent is on technical (how you designed and programmed your robot and its attachments and 25% on the actual completion of the missions in the 2 1/2 minute rounds.

I hope that each of these students will continue to participate in Lego Robotics through the age of fourteen. My husband, Brent Hibbert, also a Pepperdine graduate, teaches Technology Education at Dubois High School. A long-term goal for him, is to develop a high school robotics team that can participate in FIRST's Robotic Competition for high school students. Brent co-coached our team and his engineering insight was invaluable. He really helped the kids get their robot and its mission attachments competition ready.