- The initiative benefits different public educational centers that will participate in the robotics tournament
The advisor of Innovation, Research and Development, Juan José Martínez, points out that "it’s important for the participating teams to be able to develop their talent and thanks to the agreement with Fundación Cepsa, they have the necessary materials to practice before the competition." One of our objectives at the Tenerife Science and Technology Park is to promote learning in the scientific field through robotics, and we want the island to continue being a national benchmark.
On the other hand, the head of Fundación Cepsa in the Canary Islands, Belén Machado, explains that "for this edition, we’ve focused on public educational centers, whose presence in this friendly competition had been minimal until now, allowing the participation of 20 teams from 13 centers." In this way, we help them promote active and experiential learning, as well as the acquisition of skills and values linked to innovation, an entrepreneurial attitude, and creative thinking.
The public educational centers that benefit are CEIP Tierra del Trigo, Buen Paso, Los Blanquitos, San Bernardo, La Corujera, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, La Pared, Rambla de la Cruz, Chayofa, and María Rosa Alonso, and the IES Canarias Cabrera Pinto, El Médano, and Montaña de Guaza. The teams will be distributed as follows: 5 Discover teams, 7 Explore teams, and 8 Challenge teams.
The program is divided into three categories according to the age of the participants. In this way, the Challenge teams (10-16 years old) will develop an innovation project, in addition to programming, designing and building a robot within a period of three or four months. On their part, the Explore teams (6-9 years old) will have to research a real problem that they will then present through an Illustrative Poster and learn about simple machines by building a LEGO model with a motorized component. Finally, in the DISCOVER category (4-6 years old), they will design and build a model related to the theme using LEGO DUPLO bricks.
Each season, the FLL project invites all teams to discover the fun and excitement of science and technology by proposing a challenge, which is linked to the global challenge related to a current world problem. This year the challenge is called “Masterpiece.” In this way, all the work of the teams will be related to the arts, a discipline that is part of the acronym STEAM in English, which stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics." These skills are key for economic and social development; thanks to them, sustainable responses can be given to the challenges of a knowledge and innovation-based society.
