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An Exciting Milestone… Crossed!

In early July 2024, a group of six teenagers, their coaches, and a few enthusiastic parents embarked on an exciting journey from Oslo to Sydney. The mission? To represent Norway at the Asia Pacific Open Challenge (APOC) of the First Lego League (FLL) Challenge, 2023 edition, themed “Masterpiece“ in Australia. Competing against 53 teams from 27 different countries, many of whom were seasoned veterans, this first-time team, Art In Smart (AIS), from Norway, aimed to compete and have fun on this international stage.

The team raised their game in the Robot Playoffs, scoring their personal best of the entire season – 440 points out of 550 points. Team AIS presented the innovation project, SpeakNow, a language learning app aimed at teens, that was conceived with the intent of creating impact for youngsters who find language-learning hard in the traditional way. 

The FLL journey

It has been an exciting journey – from being a first-time participating team, to winning two-levels of the competition and then qualifying for the International Open Challenge.
Winning the Oslo Regionals, being crowned Champions and winning the first place in the Innovation Project, against 25 other teams was the most unexpected, yet delightful moment of this journey – turning the project from a 10-week short stint to a 10 month long initiative. Also, this first win injected enough momentum in the team to further carry on and win prizes at the Scandinavia Finale (1st place in Tech & a Top 3 Champion’s spot). SpeakNow was shortlisted to be one of ten innovation projects to be presented at the Scandinavia Innovation Awards in Oslo. The podium at Scandinavia enabled qualifying to compete at the APOC in Sydney. 

Experiential learning

Through this journey, they experienced the FLL Core value of Discovery gaining several new skills throughout the process. The kids learned from several advisors – language experts, user researchers, angel investors, innovation practitioners and more. Team AIS embraced teamwork and inclusion. Sometimes completing tasks by complementing each other and on other occasions working together to solve a problem they encountered. On this journey, not only did they work hard on the FLL missions and project, but also gained a bucketloads of skills in preparing & making presentations of judges, handling Q&A, presenting to potential sponsors and raising funds and a lot more. Throughout, the team celebrated every small win and had fun as they worked.

Lessons Learned

During the course of this project, Team AIS learned and applied principles of product development to both, the robot game and to the innovation project. While engaging with experts, they exercised their curiosity-muscles and asked questions to further their learning. They applied themselves in designing questionnaires and surveys, interviewing people, doing research on topics. While iterating on solutions, the kids worked various prototyping tools – including using Miro to storyboard, MIT AppInventor, Bubble IO and others. The team experimented with various forms of presentations in these various events. For the robot play-offs, the kids iterated on designing a Lego robot to maximize points within the stipulated time – learning about mechanical design, spike programming the robot and further developing their analytical skills through design of mission-strategy. Taking it to the next level, after qualifying for Sydney, the team learned to make presentations to potential corporate sponsors, arranged bake sales and sold raffle tickets to raise over €20,000. 

At APOC, they interacted with teams from several countries (like Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Hungary, South Africa, Turkey, USA, UK and more). They engaged in several exciting activities that celebrated the culture of inclusion and shared several nuggets of traditions from Norway.

Reflections

As coaches, it has been incredible to witness the transformation in this group of kids. They gained confidence in articulating, debating and presenting their ideas. As the team reflected on this journey, they emphasize that they learned the importance of teamwork, time management, and balancing priorities. Their research, presentation skills, and ability to give and receive constructive feedback has improved. This experience provided them with practical insights into the product development process and taught them how to navigate both success and failure.

Reflecting on this journey, we are immensely grateful for the support from the school, parents, friends, families, and organizations that provided financial support & volunteered through different parts of the journey.

What’s next

As this season comes to a close, the kids on this first AIS team have extracted every ounce of learning from their experience. With the next FLL season, themed as Submerged, on the horizon, we are excited to recruit a new team and embark on yet another journey of innovation and growth – one more time.