Clear Creek robotics team shines at competition Posted On: Sunday, Jan. 18 2009 12:45 AM By Todd Martin
Special to the Daily Herald

Meeting after school almost every day, coming up on weekends and even gathering during the holidays, a group of Clear Creek Elementary School students made an impressive showing in a robotics competition and learned a wealth of lessons ranging from math to the environment to cooperation and teamwork.

Noel Taylor, a fifth-grade teacher and one of four sponsors for the club, smiled and shook his head as he considered his response to his team's performance. "It was transformative for them," he said.

To compete in the FIRST Lego League program, the Clear Creek Cyber Tigers completed a research project about global environmental issues, illustrated their findings, conducted a survey, put together a Web site and presented it all to a panel of judges.

The group of five students also pieced together a robot out of Legos, and programmed the rolling robot to accomplish 19 missions spread out over a surface roughly the size of a pool table.

In the first round of competition, the Clear Creek team scored near the bottom on the robotics part, but posted high marks for their research about carbon dioxide pollution and the promise of magnetic cars.

What made Taylor and the other sponsors most proud was that the five students regrouped and in four weeks reworked their robot.

"They scrapped the first one and rebuilt it for the second tournament," said Taylor.

Once again, they finished well in the research phase and drastically improved their showing in the robotics phase, finishing 24th out of 60 teams in the second-round event.

The Clear Creek team posted their best scores ever in every category in its four-year history.

Speaking without notes in front of prepared posters, the students took turns explaining that polluting carbon dioxide emissions come from sources ranging from wildfires to vehicle engines to dying trees.

Underscoring their point, the team sent out surveys to all the families of Clear Creek Elementary School. From the 238 surveys returned, they found that the families in their Fort Hood village account for about 5.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide every week.

The second part of their research centered on replacing traditional transportation infrastructure with highways, rails and subway lines that use magnetic technology.

They demonstrated with a Lego prototype. A small car zoomed along a short roadway equipped with a row of magnets.

During the robotics competition, students set up their programmed robot and completed a range of missions simulating environmental exercises.

The robot moved along the table, stopping, shifting and lifting items that insulated a house, used a bicycle instead of a car, and protected an endangered polar bear, among many others.

The students said they learned a lot during the project and were grateful for the time with their sponsors – Taylor, Thomas Weeks, Rich Rinehart and Cheryl Tyson.

"It was confusing because I started out thinking I was doing one thing, but we ended up doing something else," said fifth-grader Danielle Daniels. She said she learned a lot researching the effects of pollution and putting together the robotics project.

Students also said the research took a long time. Calculating 238 surveys proved tedious, too, they said.

The lessons, though, were important ones.

"It made me think different about what I do to the environment," said fifth-grader Tristan Guyett.

"It made me think about how I need to be responsible," Daniels said.

Weeks and Taylor said the robotics competition was more difficult than in past years, with organizers adding missions to make sure that teams wouldn't breeze through.

This year's Clear Creek team showed resilience and cooperation.

The students worked well together, pitching in to help when they had to rework their robot, Weeks said. "They helped each other and came together as a team," he said. "It's a lot of commitment because of the hours."

The competition team includes fourth-grader Joshua McKinster and fifth-graders Alejandro Sanchez, Neil Albrecht, Daniels and Guyett.