PEEL DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD
Fallingbrook M.S. Lego League Champions

After winning the Engineering Excellence Award at a local qualifying tournament in 2023, Fallingbrook Middle School students, the Stampsations, brought home the 1st place Champions Award at the Ontario West provincial robotics competition! 

On January 20, 2024, nearly 400 students from across the province put their programming skills to the ultimate test at the 2024 FIRST LEGO League's (FLL) Ontario West Provincial Championships held at Durham College. The tournament was by invitation only, after teams had successfully competed at their local qualifying events. 
 
In FLL, students apply math and science concepts to design, build, and program autonomous robots using LEGO Spike software. Teams use the 21st Century Competencies of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity to develop their innovative research projects. This year's theme was "MASTERPIECE", which challenged teams to fuse arts and technology to inspire and engage with others across the globe with their hobbies.  

Taking first place, the Stampsations, decided to focus on increasing engagement in stamp collecting. The team recognized that the rise of communication technology, such as emails, virtually replaced postage leading to the decline and eventual loss of stamp collecting in the modern era. In response to this, they created a global treasure-hunting game featuring digital stamps scattered worldwide waiting to be discovered.  The program is a geocaching-based app which uses augmented reality and precise location tracking.  Their project enables people from around the world to connect with their communities, get physically active, and gain valuable knowledge about history and geography. 

The team used the engineering design process throughout the development of their innovative idea, starting with paper drafts in September, and continuously refining the solution with extensive research through dozens of documents, user feedback, and expert consultation.   During their project work, the team consulted with experts from a variety of fields including a graphic designer, a media relations expert at Canada Post, a representative from a local stamp auction company, as well as software and game developers. 
 
The winning team from Fallingbrook M.S. was thrilled to represent Peel District School Board and showcase science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) education in action. This team will be traveling to Bodø, Norway in May 2024 for the European Open Championship where they will compete against the best teams from around the world.