WILD IDEA: FIRST® LEGO® League In a Week!

I'm a Maker, I'm a starter. I love starting new projects, especially those that involve making something, and those that involve engaging with those who might make that something. I create a scavenger hunt for community of a very specific sort, and reach out via the Internet through a mechanism I've developed. It's called The Community Lemonade Game and it works.

It all starts with a Wild Idea. The Wild Idea becomes the Gauntlet of The Community Lemonade Game. The Challenge.

This time the Wild Idea is: Create Multi-National Teams playing the FIRST LEGO® League and FIRST LEGO® League Jr. games (students of different nations co-existing on the same teams). Form teams on Monday and compete on Friday. Bring unassociated youth together in a camp format. Create new friendships: addressing all the language barriers and cultural differences that exist. Introduce many new youth to the FIRST Robotics games. Enable delivery of FIRST branded certificates and trophies.

Can we do it? Yes. We are doing it. We've been planning for months - since September - and started on Monday... yesterday. We've gotten the right licensing, we have International students. We have American students. We are doing it.

DAY 1

Arrange students into groups and then into smaller groups.

Learn about the FIRST LEGO League and the FIRST LEGO League Jr. challenges.

Learn about the robotics platform that we will use (The LEGO EV3LEGO EV3 or WeDo).

Form Multi-National teams.

Get students working on their challenges.

There are many obstacles to overcome. Time is the biggest of these. Funding for sure, because with funding you can do things. Without it, you have to work harder. Language. Social norms. To those familiar with FIRST robotics, you know just how much work is involved in a FIRST program.

Finally, I think I am just understanding the framework of the FIRST Robotics competition. It is certainly about Robotics, but more importantly, it is about Inspiration. That is the I in FIRST. For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

It's because if you participate on a robotics team, you have a chance of becoming a future member of a more advanced robotics team. And everyone loves robots. But certainly, not everyone believes they can or wants to build the robots. But if they are on the team they should try to help solve the robot game. For those who are strong ideators, there is the Project. The goal is to come up with a problem related to a subject and try to solve it. In this case, it is Space Exploration. Everyone LOVES Space Exploration, but everyone doesn't always put themselves in the role of trying to solve a Space Exploration subject. If you consider big problems, you have a chance of embracing bigger problems later in life. It's a lot to ask of an individual, if you work on it as a community... as a team... you have the support of the group around you, and you can bounce ideas off of each other, and have even bigger ideas. This will require teamwork, and these are kids, so there will be issues related to the different personality types. It happens with adults, too.

There's a big other issue that I will later address, and this Multi-National camp experience is bringing it all out.

Today, Day 2, we are headed to the Columbia Space Center in Downey, where we hope to be inspired about a problem that we might solve.

Trish Tsoiasue is a community builder based in Long Beach, California . She builds socially responsible, grassroots communities, believes in the power of play, has many hobbies and interests, and lots and lots of ideas. She is trained in LEGO® Serious Play and the Creative Problem Solving Institute's methods of intentional creativity. The communities she has created and in which she takes most pride are the Long Beach LEGO® User Group, Makersville and the Leading Edge Multi-National Games, which she has led since 2018. She is the inventor of the Community Lemonade Game, a mechanism for path finding and problem solving that she plays. She's convinced that one day you will play it too. Perhaps one day she will define the Community Lemonade Game so that more people can play it. You can find her experiential videos on her Squigglemom YouTube channel (please subscribe!), and when she's not blogging on the Patch, she's blogging on Squigglemom.net.