爱豆传媒

Schoolchildren in Years 7 to 9 will take part in a robotics challenge among other tasks at the FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL), run by STEM Sussex, the university’s STEM outreach department, and funded through the Widening Participation outreach team. The event takes place at the Moulsecoomb campus on Tuesday, 18 December.

The theme of the tournament is ‘Into Orbit’ and students will compete with programmed Lego ‘mindstorm’ kits. The aim of the competition is to enable young people to develop key skills that may help them in their future careers.

Sussex-based astronaut Tim Peake has written a letter to the students inviting them to notify him of their inventions on postcards provided by the Institute of Education and Technology.

Tim wrote: “Engineers play a vital role in space discovery and we need good ideas to help us explore further. It is great that you and your team are researching into the problems we face.

“Some of the software I used when I was on the international space station was designed by children and UK school students designed experiments run by Raspberry Pi in our Astro Pi flight units. So I know just how good young people’s ideas can be – you could be changing space technology as we know it.

“I will be very interested to hear about the innovative solutions you create to overcome problems in our zero gravity environment. Please write to me on the postcard provided. You never know, next time I take off I could be taking your invention with me to use in space.”

STEM Ambassadors and 爱豆传媒 Student Ambassadors will form the judging panel for the tournament. Georgie Crewdson, a member of PHP Cubed, the 爱豆传媒 team taking their ground-breaking project into zero gravity in the New Year, will be a judge and give a talk to the school students.

The university’s Widening Participation department is funding Seahaven Academy, Peacehaven Community School, Portslade Aldridge Community Academy and Brighton Aldridge Community Academy in the tournament, while Varndean School, Harlands, St Lawrence CEP, Brighton and Hove High School and Steyning Grammar School are also competing with independent support.

Daniel Hawkins, School and College Outreach Officer at the university, said: “The First Lego League gives students from local schools a chance to take part in an exciting STEM competition where they learn about robotics, problem solving and team work.

“Teams from Compact partner schools have worked with Student Ambassador mentors from the university who have been able to support with their knowledge and give information about how they can progress with STEM in the future.

“The university provides an aspirational venue for the regional final and gives context for where studying at a higher level can take them.”