Schools

Magnolia Students Place In State Robotics Championship

Magnolia Elementary School's Transformers Team celebrates a year of robotics victories.

Magnolia Elementary School’s Transformers team won a 3rd place award in the state finals of the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) LEGO League Challenge.

The Transformers will soon celebrate the crowning achievement of an eventful first year of competition with a pizza party, Eva Fallon said in an interview on Thursday. Fallon serves as a coach with the Eleanor Roosevelt High School robotics club that helped mentor the team.

The Maryland FIRST Lego League competition on Saturday was a long day for the students, according to Fallon, who is also the wife of the Magnolia team's instructor, George Boyce. At the end of the competition, during the rewards presentation, the students began to fear they would win nothing. As name after name was called out, the Transformers weren’t mentioned.

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They couldn’t imagine they had won one of the top awards, not at the state level. Boyce prepared them for the worst. “So he was trying to lower their expectations, and then they went and got an award,” Fallon said.

The Transformers 3rd place win was in the research project presentation competition. Teams also competed in core values, robot design, and robot performance. The competition saw 64 FIRST LEGO teams facing off at UMBC and 10 Junior FIRST LEGO teams competing to win. Teams hailed from Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Puerto Rico. 

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In the research project face off, teams met the challenge to explore an actual problem that scientists and engineers are trying to solve — and to develop an innovative solution.

The Transformers solution was developing the idea of using carbon nanotubes to implement sensors to detect salmonella. The idea came from scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, who shared their discovery and work with the Magnolia students in a computer teleconference meeting.

Placing in the competition was the highlight of an eventful year for the Magnolia robotics students. Thirty Magnolia students had participated in regional challenges throughout the year, with all four of Magnolia's teams scoring in the top half during robotics' qualifying matches.

But the students, mentors and instructors are not resting on their achievements, instead they're gearing up for next year, Fallon said. Now that they know what the competition involves, they know how to better prepare, she explained. “It’s kind of exciting that we’re looking forward.”

Magnolia’s Transformers Team

Hakeem Abubakar
Mojisola Akinwande
Josiah Canty
Jason Hernandez
Marcellis Johnson
Courtney Kapondjo
Adama Kargbo
Pierre Todd
Flavyne Tsongwain


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