2009
Home schooling is a viable alternative to the state school’s approach to education, says veteran teacher, former principal and now Doctor of Education Leo Roache.
Read his Thesis here:
Free Range Robotics were also presented awards for the World Champion 1st Place in Web Design, World Champion AMAZE Award (for innovative design, engineering and programming), World Champion Energy Award (for team enthusiasm and dedication) and also World Champion 1st Place Division Tournament Champion. The team were also presented with a Silver Fern Award. This award originates from the military. It is a prestigious award, given to soldiers who have given significant service to their country. The Kiwibots NZ had been granted the power to select and award this to certain students for their service to NZ as a representative (in battle) overseas. The team has certainly experienced the sweat, blood and tears of hard battle over these last couple of years! It was great to acknowledge their hard work and dedication.
Interestingly enough there was another Robotics Competition called Best Robotics which was held at the same time, and that was won by homeschoolers also. Homeschoolers are dominating these competitions!
The way the tournament works is that the teams work through qualifying matches which gives the top teams the opportunity to form alliances with other teams from their division and play through a set of finals to find the top alliance in their division (four divisions). Then the top alliance from each division plays through semi-finals and finals to find the overall tournament champion. The Free Range Robotics team was in alliance with a Chinese team and North Shore’s Kristen School. This alliance is the one that won the World Championship in Dallas this morning (Sat evening in Dallas).
We should be so proud of these teams; they competed against the best 394 teams from around the world to be World Champions. And all the New Zealand teams were outstanding.
Go New Zealand!!
Stephanie
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Thanks for this report Stephanie
They also scooped more than their fair share of other awards, winning the New Zealand Championship awards for Web Design (www.robotics.org.nz), the Think Award for Autonomous Programming, the Promote award for the best team video, the VEX Essay Award and the runner up for Programming Skills Award.
Free Range Robotics team members: Michael Lawton, George Gillard, Rhinannon Waller, Terry Patterson, Richard Paul, Steven Lawton, Ethan Allen, David Paul, Max Waller, Hannah Ross, Kane Ross (not in photo: Daniel Minnee)
The VEX Robotics Competition is run throughout the world with over 2400 teams in more than 13 countries. The program was designed to encourage students to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Dr Johan Potgieter, senior lecturer at Massey University School of Advanced Engineering and Technology, who instigated the VEX competition in New Zealand, said “We have students now coming into engineering who have never thought of doing it… it’s really opened up a lot of opportunities for these kids.”
Each team has to design, build and program a robot to play a specific game. This year’s game is Clean Sweep, and the object of the game is for alliances of two teams (three for the finals) to obtain a higher score than their opponent’s alliance by moving as many balls as possible into the opposing team’s side of the field.
Last year was the first year of VEX Robotics in New Zealand and the homeschool team Free Range Robotics won the inaugural national tournament. They also won the New Zealand Championship for Programming and went on to win the World Programming Championship in America last year. Massey University also won the World Championship Tournament in the university section for New Zealand and are travelling to Dallas in April to defend their title. Jason Morella, senior director of Education and Competition for Innovation First, Inc, creators of VEX, said “What NZ did last year was amazing…no one ever would have imagined that most of your teams were doing this for the first year, because you came across like very experienced veterans and just blew the world away.”
This year the winning homeschool team who, for the finals, were in an alliance of three, were aligned with Avondale College and Mt Albert Grammar School. The runners up were an alliance made up of two teams from Kristin School and one team from Glenfield College. The crowd, on the edge of their seats, watched as it came down to a one-all draw, with the last game deciding the national champions. Max Waller (coach), and drivers Ethan Allen and Richard Paul, kept their cool and showed their skill, by manoeuvring around the field scoring points for their team and dumping balls at the last minute to secure Free Range Robotics’ second national championship win.
Michael Lawton, who won the Programming World Championship for the team in Dallas last year, spent his time this year focusing on web design, the team video (both were the winning entries in the NZ section) and designing robots for the team. Richard Paul programmed the winning robot this year, which won the Think Award for excellence in Autonomous Programming and also came runner up in Programming Skills.
All the team members are homeschool students and most have never been to school.
They spent months getting ready for this year’s New Zealand Nationals, held on the 27-28 March at the Telstra Clear Events Centre in Manukau, often working late at night to finish their robots. As a small team who competed with three robots, all team members, contributed to the win with different team members building, designing, programming, driving and scouting out other teams. The whole team helps with fundraising, stocktaking at The Warehouse and running sausage sizzles.
Free Range Robotics are looking for sponsors and funds so they can send 10 members of their team to the World Championships in Dallas, not only as reigning champions to represent New Zealand but also as World Champion Programmer Winners to defend their title.
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Congratulations Free Range Robotics
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