Bourne Academy wins the regional heat of the First Lego League Competition: Tuesday 16th December 2014

We are proud to announce that we signed up to take part in the first Lego League (FLL) competition in the UK. FLL is a global science and technology competition with over 250,000 young people taking part each year which is aimed at young people aged nine to 16 years, working in teams of up to 10 to complete a programming robot challenge and missions. It helps to see the discovery, excitement and fun in science and technology. Started by Dean Kamen and Kjeld Kirk Kristianson in 1998, it has since grown enormously and now takes place in 70 countries around the 
world. As part of the 2014 World Class Challenge, we had to redesign how we gather knowledge and skills in the 21st century. We called our team BA Builders and offered the judges a solution on ‘How to learn about binary’. We also built a robot which was going to be assessed on innovative design, programming and robustness at the regional heat at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford on November 
29. Our students worked very hard in the weeks leading up to and during the competition in order to impress the judges in the following categories: robot design, presentation on a learning topic, robot missions, team work and core values and we are proud to announce that we came first out of 22 schools from the region who took part in the 
competition. The speaker of First Lego League Awards Ceremony said: “...The winner is a team who has worked extremely hard, a team who has generally performed extremely well across all the categories which is what the First Lego League is all about, and that team is...BA Builders!’ Head of Computer Science, Antoaneta Moorfoot who coordinated the event on behalf of the school said: “What makes this award very special is that we entered the competition for the first time and were the winners! I am extremely proud of their hard work and excellent team spirit! “We give our very grateful thanks to our sponsor of this exciting opportunity - Winyard Engineering Ltd of Spalding. Without their funding we could have not been part of this exciting venture.” Jacob Loweth, Sales Engineer from Winyard Engineering, said: “We are proud to support Bourne Academy and wish them every success in the national championships.” Bourne Academy now goes forward to the next stage which is the national final to be held on February 1, 2015 at Loughborough University, with the winner taking part in the World Festival in USA in April 2015.