We at DataStation Innovation Cloud are all huge fans of Lego, starting from our CEO, to our marketing and development team and even me. Legos are an unavoidable part of almost every desk in our company and they tend to be very inspirational. And yes, we still play with them.
One day, our developer Marina Banjević, discovered FIRST LEGO League, which gave us immediate motivation to support this competition and, considering our love for Lego and our vision of creativity and innovation everything clicked together perfectly, just like Lego bricks. Within First LEGO League around 29,000 teams from 80 different countries are participating and it is our great honor and joy to support a young team called LegoGym from Kragujevac, Serbia, city where our development center is located. Marina’s initiative placed her in a mentor position and she will guide this young team from Kragujevac with their professors and coaches Katarina Veljković and Ljubica Mudrić Staniškovski.
FIRST LEGO League is designed to encourage and develop imaginative thinking and teamwork for kids from the age 9 to 16, that are guided by adult Coaches to research real-world problems and are challenged to develop creative solutions for the problems they have identified. Each Challenge has three parts: the Robot Game, the Project, and the Core Values. This year, FIRST® LEGO® League TRASH TREKSM Challenge FLL teams will explore the fascinating world of trash with the aim to find better ways to manage our trash.
LegoGym’s inspiration for this challenge started with a research on what are the most used resources in their school and they discovered that we don’t have a specific system for recycling markers for white boards in schools. They’ve done research in all schools in Kragujevac on the usage of markers and visited recycling center in order to find the best solution. This very innovative idea has a huge potential for further development, practical use and laying foundations on this segment of recycling. On their way to find a perfect solution they are learning together, sharing their experience, developing critical thinking, learning basic STEM applications, practicing presentation skills and most importantly, they are learning through fun and being curious. All of this represents The FIRST LEGO league Core Values which are cornerstone of the program.
Our biggest challenge in supporting this program is not to play with their robots!
