- The Federal Ministry of Education has indicated that from next year all the 104 Unity Schools will participate in the First Lego League national robotics championship competition.
The Federal Ministry of Education has indicated that from next year all the 104 Unity Schools will participate in the First Lego League national robotics championship competition.
The Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, who spoke through the Permanent Secretary, Sonny Echono, made this known at the sixth edition of the competition themed ‘City Shaper.’
He said the decision to allow all Unity schools to participate was aimed to strengthen critical and computational thinking among students.
A statement issued at the end of the competition stated that children aged nine to 18 years numbering about 1,000 and 50 teachers drawn from 60 schools participated in the national championship with Metra 101 Team, an all-girls team from Federal Girls Government College, Ikot Obio Itong, Akwa Ibom State emerging as the overall champions.
Other winners include: Robot Design (2nd place) Award – Tech Gears X; Against All Odds Award – FGGC, Bauchi; Mentor/Coach Award – FGGC, Kabba; Core Values Award – Airol Unilag; Robot Performance Award – Bred Hub; Glistobots – Robot Design – Glisten School and Robot Performance (2nd) – FSTC Orozo10; and Project Award – Technobots – Vivian Fowler School.
The minister said, “This marks a significant first step in our work in ensuring the infusion of coding in our school curricula to strengthen critical and computational thinking as a key skillset that pupils in secondary education must-have.
“This will ensure that we broaden the base by making sure that the opportunities of this preparation are made possible today even though the manifestations of the series of efforts we are making now will come tomorrow.”
On his part, the Director-General of National Information Technology Development Agency, Mr Kashifu Inuwa, represented by the Director of eGovernment Development and Regulation, Dr Vincent Olatunji, in his keynote address said that NITDA was saddled with the responsibility of developing and regulating the use of Information Technology in the country, which has contributed immensely to the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
An IT Manager representing SAP, Mr Olajide Ajayi, said that the FLL tournament was created to inspire the pupils to become engineers, technological experts, scientists, great thinkers and help them find solutions to real-life problems.
The Chairman, Board of Trustees of Coderina Education and Technology Foundation, Mr Femi Niyi, stated that the competition was a culmination of weeks and months of learning activities, researching and discovery in science and technology in hands-on experiential form, putting theories into practice which has made the participatory students to find an intersection between theory and practice.
