Event: More than 450 elementary and middle school students from the Austin area will re-enact a Star Wars battle scene and demonstrate other robotic achievements to the public in the seventh annual LEGO MINDSTORMS Mania! event sponsored by The University of Texas at Austin College of Engineering, National Instruments and the Texas Computer Education Association.
When: 9-11:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 12. An opening rally will occur from 9- 9:30 a.m., and students’ robots will perform for the public from 9:30-11:30 a.m
Background: Dozens of robots will play golf on a miniature putting green, serve as rides in miniature carnivals, re-enact a battle from “The Empire Strikes Back,” and perform other actions during LEGO MINDSTORMS Mania! Each group of elementary and middle school students will display their robots with assistance from Central Texas teachers and professional engineers from The University of Texas at Austin and National Instruments.
Photo and interview opportunities will be available with students, teachers, mentors, and leadership from the College of Engineering and National Instruments.
The event will showcase what students learned while using engineering principles to build and program robots under the guidance of 28 central Texas teachers trained through DTEACh (Design Technology and Engineering for America’s Children), the university’s training program integrating engineering design principles into classroom curricula.
Teacher training for the event occurred during summer sessions of DTEACh, where teachers used LEGO MINDSTORMS technology. The technology involves a robotics tool set for building and programming robots to perform tasks. For the LEGO MINDSTORMS Mania! event, teachers and professional engineers who volunteer in classrooms helped the students use the LEGO robot building system and software based on National Instruments’ LabVIEW graphical development platform.
