Early ISD composed student teams for their first year of robotics competition in EISD history and came up winners.
Early Elementary, Early Middle School, and Early High school each have teams. Keith Taylor is the coach of the elementary teams, Mrs. Tami Hull coaches the middle school teams and the coach of the high school team is Gidget Gifford.
Each team was given the task of building a robot from a Mindstorm Lego NXT kit. The students were to program the robot to perform tasks which met the challenge given by TCEA (Texas Computer Educators Association) in October. Every school in the competition had the same challenge assigned.
On Monday, November 30, the Early robotics teams went to San Angelo to compete in the area competition. Early did extremely well. Each team competed 3 times and scored points by completing tasks in the challenge. The two best scores were added together for the team overall score and ranking. The high school team earned second place in the advanced division (grades 9-12). One team from Early Elementary earned second place in the intermediate division (grades 4-8) and two teams from the middle school earned third and fourth places. The top three places were awarded a trophy and ribbons.
The top two places in each division automatically advance to the State tournament in San Angelo in April qualifying the Early high school and elementary teams. The third and fourth place middle school teams could earn a wildcard place in the state tournament if their scores are high enough among all the scores in the state. That decision will be made in January.
Pictured above are elementary teams. Below are photos of the second place elementary team and a team performing tasks with their robot. Photos contributed by Keith Taylor.
