VEX Robotics 2020

Post date: Jan 31, 2020 10:0:42 PM

Members of 6th class have been working very hard for the last couple of months as part of the schools VEX IQ robotics team. Last year was the inaugural year for the initiative which has kindly been brought to us courtesy of Offaly county council and it proved to be a very enjoyable experience for the pupils. 

This years finals took place today in Coláiste Colm Tullamore and the Killeigh pupils performed brilliantly on the day.  They showed off excellent driving skills and managed to score great points while doing the team cooperation challenges. The pupils also did well at the individual skills challenge and our chief coder excelled in the automated challenge. 

Unfortunately we were not among the prize winners but were narrowly beaten in the team cooperation challenge finals losing out  on a combined score of 63 pts to Killeighs 52 pts.  Congratulations to all of the prize winners and in particular Scoil Mhuire who travel to Cork to represent Offaly in the national competition. 

We wish to thank Ray Bell and all of his team at Offaly county council for all their support with this initiative and indeed for organizing a very enjoyable event today. Thanks also to David from CIT for all his help and advice. 

Activities such as these are simply not possible without the help of our teaching team and we are very grateful to Ms Sheeran, Ms Screeney and Ms Ryan for their help in facilitating this initiative. Thanks also to Mr Breslin for his help with this years team. 

Our pupils were fine ambassadors for our school today and we are incredibly proud of the way in which they approached this activity. They gave a lot of extra time outside of class time to design and build the robots and to practise their driving skills. This exemplary attitude in addition to the manner in which they carried themselves today while at the competition makes us extremely proud of them. Thanks also to their parents for facilitating extra practise after school.

Finally we wish to say a special thank you to Mr Phelan for leading this initiative and for giving of his time and experience so generously to the boys and girls. 

While there are no more competitions for this year, we do hope to allow other members of 6th class and members of 5th class access to the robots before the end of the school year.