FIRST LEGO League Challenge Workshops for Coaches

FIRST LEGO League is a great experience for children from 4th through 8th grade. The quality of that experience depends on how well the teams’ coaches understand the relatively unique project-based learning that makes the program such a great complement to classroom instruction. To help both prospective coaches and returning coaches gain insight and confidence in their role we offer a series of workshops. These workshops cover a combination of the facilitating role that coaches play as well as prepare coaches to serve as informal technical consultants on LEGO robotics while the team members do the hands-on work.

The following sessions were offered in Spring 2024. Scroll down for Recordings of Past Workshops.


Remote Workshops

We are excited to announce our Spring 2024 workshop schedule. We will be offering three progressive workshops. You can sign up for all or choose those that fit your coaching level.

Introduction to FIRST and ORTOP

We invite you to join ORTOP staff for this remote workshop as we introduce you to our robotics programs in Oregon, the role of project-based learning, the guiding values and principles for FIRST robotics, and how you can get started with a program for your students.


Beginning Spike Prime Programming

All about programming with Spike Prime! This remote workshop is for new coaches. Learn how to navigate the Spike Prime App for FLL Challenge and program a SPIKE Prime robot. A SPIKE Prime kit is not required to attend this workshop.


Intermediate Spike Prime Programming

This remote workshop is for FLL Challenge coaches who are familiar with Spike Prime and want to learn more about sensors and intermediate programming skills. A SPIKE Prime kit is not required to attend this workshop.



Recordings of Past Workshops

You can find recordings of past workshops below as well as on our Wiki.

FIRST LEGO League Challenge is a hands-on, inquiry-led, project-based robotics program that invigorates and engages students and coaches alike. Join us for a remote session on the Core Values that inform the curriculum, the pedagogy of Project-Based Learning, and the coaching strategies and logistics of running a team during a competitive season. Staff and volunteers from ORTOP will be available to answer questions.

Time: About 1-1/2 hours

A recording of this workshop can be found here.

Join ORTOP Staff and Volunteers for an in-depth conversation about the Innovation Project– how to set your team up for a satisfying research and design experience, as well as a successful judging session. This was a remote workshop and intended either as a stand-alone refresher or as part of the Introduction to ORTOP and FIRST series.

Time: About 1 hour

A recording of this workshop can be found here.

FIRST LEGO League Challenge allows teams of students in 4th through 8th grade to explore project-based learning that deepen their understanding of math and science while they work together to learn creative problem skills. Our goal is to prepare you to guide your students’ learning about robotics, not make you a robotics engineer. We will help you get comfortable with building and programming a robot so you can guide the students’ exploratory learning with the goal of them learning more than you.

This workshop is for new coaches and mentors with little or no experience with FIRST LEGO League or LEGO SPIKE Prime kits.

Join ORTOP Staff as we talk you through forming a FIRST LEGO League team, what the program looks like in Oregon, and the guiding values and pedagogy for FIRST. This is an in-person workshop, and serves as an introduction to ORTOP and FIRST.

We will then do a walk through of the “SPIKE Prime” kit and how to use its Word Blocks programming tool, which is based on a graphical language called Scratch. You will enjoy the fact that Scratch is very easy to use because it was designed from the ground up for teaching and learning. The class will then break up into small teams, each of which will use a SPIKE Prime kit. You will participate in one of these teams while your instructor will serve as your “guide on the side”. Each team will follow step-by-step instructions, while it learns how to build a simple robot and teach it how to drive. Your team will then add a color sensor to its robot and use it to teach the robot to detect and stop on a line similar to a car stopping at a stop sign. Your team will then do an open-ended exercise where you will program the robot to follow a road.

Time: About 3 hours.

For recordings of similar workshops see our Wiki.

This workshop is for coaches and mentors who want to lead their team’s learning of how to program using SPIKE Prime Word Blocks — a graphical language based on Scratch. It will introduce new concepts and then let you explore these concepts through hands-on activities based on a series of lessons you can use with your students. You will learn how to teach a robot how to drive around a challenge course using a pair of motors each of which is connected to a wheel. Then there will be an exploration of the gyro and color sensors — two of four kinds of sensors that help the robot navigate. These sensors will allow your students to create robotics that reliably move around the FIRST LEGO League challenge field and score more points. You will explore how to program the robot to make decisions using these sensors to solve fun challenges.

 

Time: About 3 hours

Live offerings of this workshop have been completed for 2022. For recordings of similar workshops see our Wiki.

This session will give coaches and mentors the opportunity to learn more about programming a robot. It will introduce new concepts and then let you explore these concepts through hands-on activities. Concepts to be covered include creating new programming blocks called “My Blocks” that allow more sophisticated programs to be created. We will also cover using variables and displaying troubleshooting information.

 

Time: About 3 hours

For recordings of similar workshops see our Wiki.

Other Workshops and Resources

Check out these videos relating to FIRST LEGO League Core Values. You will also find other resources on the ORTOP Wiki.