Victoria College sends young tech team to finals of national competition

A team of ten girls aged 12-13 from Victoria College Belfast, will represent Northern Ireland at the national finals of the First Lego League (FLL) competition. The College team was victorious in Belfast in December for its innovative technology and robotic skills.

The team from Victoria College were challenged to find a way to help children learn. They designed an interactive dog that helps build confidence and encourages children to read aloud. The team must now take this innovation to the national competition, where they will present their research around the theme of learning and show an understanding of the underlying science and technology. Additionally, the team have built and programmed a separate lego-based robot that must complete a series of tasks within a time limit. The children have had external mentoring in line with the competition guidelines to help get to this stage.

'Encouraging young people especially girls to get interested in science and technology is extremely important,' commented Tom Gray, CTO at Kainos. 'The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) approached us asking if we could support a local school in the Northern Ireland regional competition and we were delighted to oblige. The community and the wider UK economy are becoming more reliant on these skills and nurturing them is important. We can help achieve that by supporting this, and similar, projects around the UK, and working with organisations like the IET and Women Who Code.'

Victoria College also received mentoring from Sheree Atcheson, the Founder of Women Who Code UK. Through sessions at the school and workshops in the coming months, Sheree will be encouraging school-age girls to become more involved in technology.

'The competition is such a great way for the girls to get excited about technology,' added Deirdre Turkington, Assistant Principal at Victoria College. 'The scope of this project goes beyond what we do in the classroom and the support of local organisations like Kainos has been so vital to help mentor the team.'

'The IET has established a great way to raise interest and involvement with technology, but this competition is about even more than that,' said Luke McNeice, Consultant at Kainos. 'I have spent Monday afternoons on site with the team working on presentation skills. This included talking about why they made their decisions and how they approached the project both in terms of managing their team and building the robot. The FLL competition is encouraging young people to be part of the next generation of technologists and engineers.'