At the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year, the seventh and eighth grade students at Chico Oaks Adventist School started to use robots to learn lessons in teamwork, collaboration, programming, problem solving and research skills. They were divided into two teams, where each of the teams began by learning to build and program robots using the Lego Mindstorms robot kits. “Programming the robots are fun!” said Ronald Cameron.

Lego sponsors a league of teams, called the FIRST Lego League, that compete in tournaments, but the tournaments can cause conflicts for Adventists as some events are held on Sabbaths. So, Adventist schools have created the Adventist Robotics League, of which the Chico Oaks school is a member. The ARL mirrors the FLL by focusing on teamwork, learning, discovery and sportsmanship, and the teams are judged in the tournaments in the areas of teamwork, technical merit, robot game and presentation of their research projects.

The league-wide theme for this year was Power Puzzle. For the research project, teams were to choose a local building, perform a building energy audit, research possible ways for the building to reduce or off-set its power usage, and present their findings to the managers of the building. Each team needed to assess how best to divide the tasks among themselves and learn to collaborate on conducting the research, designing and programming the robot and putting together the project presentation.

On Dec. 16, 2007 — a Sunday — Chico Oaks hosted a FLL tournament. This tournament was a qualifier for the Northern California FLL Championship, which was scheduled for a Sabbath in January. Teams from all around Northern California attended. Both of the Chico teams did very well, and many from the other teams were impressed with their willingness to host a tournament when they knew that they would not accept an invitation to the championship.

While they were not able to participate in the FLL championship, the two teams from Chico Oaks traveled to Glendale Adventist Academy for an ARL tournament in February. After a morning filled with project presentations, technical judging and teamwork judging, the teams prepared for the robot game. Each team had three opportunities to earn as many points as possible on the robot table in two and a half minutes. Once the three rounds were over the judges conferred and announced that four teams would receive invitations to the ARL National Championship Tournament in May at Andrews University. Two of the four invitations went to the teams from Chico Oaks. “We were so excited that both teams, everyone in the class, could go to Michigan for the National tournament!” said Coulson Williams.

The students at Chico Oaks have learned a lot through their involvement with robotic leagues, and they are excited about participating in future robotic challenges, which have helped teach them more than just robotics. “You learn a lot of things researching for the project,” said Austin Spangler. “We also had to learn how to work well together as a team to do well in the tournament,” added Amanda Huthes.