Ocean Palms Elementary School students place in top three of global robotics competition

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Three students from Ocean Palms Elementary School placed third in the 2017-2018 Wonder League Robotics Competition’s 9-12 age bracket. 

Competing under “The Technology Trio” team name, fourth graders Marin Driscoll and Anna Dumitrascu and fifth grader Anna Hoen learned creative problem solving, coding and robotics by competing against more than 22,000 students in collaborative teams to design solutions to science and technology challenges. More than 7,100 teams from 63 countries participated in the competition, which took place this past spring. 

The Wonder League is a growing, worldwide network of elementary coding and robotics clubs using Wonder Workshop’s all-inclusive program to inspire an early love of coding, computer science, tangible learning and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education. Clubs form through schools, communities, homes, and friendship. Teams of students between the ages of 6 and 12 with access to one set of Dash & Dot robots — which students program using code — participate in the Robotics Competition, where they develop problem solving, growth mindset and creativity skills through learning to code. 

Lauren Wade, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics) resource teacher at Ocean Palms Elementary, sponsored the team. Parent volunteers helped each team to stay focused and accomplish their goals. Wade said the accomplishments of “The Technology Trio” show how much hard work and dedication the girls had to put into the competition.

The 2017-2018 Wonder League Robotics Competition began in October 2017, with a finalist round being held in February 2018. Teams competed through nine missions to explore and colonize an unknown planet by completing coding lessons and challenges. The top five teams received a Dash robot for every member of the team, and a special edition Wonder League finalist shirt.

“This Floridian trio impressed us with their loads and loads of documentation around goal setting, planning, prototyping and testing,” the Wonder League said about the local, winning team. “What an exemplar of design thinking!”