Top Ten Teams & $5,000 STEM Grant Winners Announced!

Wonder League Robotics Competitions 2017–2018

We are so proud to announce our third year of Wonder League Robotics Competition (WLRC) winners. Each year, we announce our top ten WLRC teams, five in each age category, two of which earn the grand prize of a $5,000 STEM grant. Over the past eight months, we’ve released nine missions to more than 7,100 teams from around the world — 63 countries in all! More than 22,000 kids formed school-based, after-school, community, and home teams and they engaged in creative problem solving challenges that encouraged design thinking, scientific inquiry, critical thinking, and creativity. Teams could be up to five members, ages 6–8 or 9–12, so communication and collaboration, never mind grit, were crucial components.

Today we announced on FBLive our top ten teams of 2017–2018. We can’t emphasize enough how impressed we were by all of the teams. Ready for the top ten teams?

5th PLACE (ages 6–8 & 9–12):

TEAM VETRI: This team is from our backyard here in San Jose, CA. They are an after-school team from Stratford School. These four teammates had really thoughtful reflections about their planning and prototyping phases, which led them to create a clever grabber attachment to bring the hatchlings home. Congrats to the team whose name means victory, Team Vetri!

GALACTIC GIRLS: These three girls from San Francisco, CA, had no prior coding experience when they came together to impress us with their sweeper attachment solution.These girls, from St. Thomas the Apostle, were so thoughtful in their lessons learned. Way to go, Galactic Girls!

4th PLACE (ages 6–8 & 9–12):

DEBUGGING ZEBRAS: This clever, all-girls team from Champaign, Illinois, had such an authentic final presentation with the girls using really rich code speak to talk about their process. Plus they had such a creative story-based narrative to their team’s journey. Well done, Debugging Zebras!

DINOMAX: This lone ranger, a team of one dedicated to our Wonder League Robotics Competition, is from South Carolina. He wowed us with his sticky attachment, Scratch storytelling, and thorough reflections. Yay, Dinomax!

3rd PLACE (ages 6–8 & 9–12):

HAPPY YODER: This team of two hails all the way from Taiwan. They actually had two working prototypes, and their final one had an innovative use of rubber bands. They leveraged real world examples, and drew creative inspiration from a yellow bird song they learned in school. Way to go, Happy Yoder!

THE TECHNOLOGY TRIO: Another all-girls team! This Floridian trio impressed us with their loads and loads of documentation around goal setting, planning, prototyping, and testing. What an exemplar of design thinking! Way to go, The Technology Trio!

2nd PLACE (ages 6–8 & 9–12):

SPACE GUARDIANS: We were so impressed with this team of team who had amazing planning prowess. They too were from Taiwan! This team also showed us their skills with lots of digital effects in their final presentation. A big congrats goes to the second place winners, the Space Guardians!

STA SPACE RAIDERS: This second San Francisco-based team is actually from the same school as the Galactic Girls. This dynamic team of five from St. Thomas the Apostle created a lobster-trap type of attachment with several rubber bands to safely capture and transport the hatchlings. Plus they had a creative NASA-themed presentation, summing up their cosmic journey with the Wonder League Robotics Competition. Congratulations to the STA Space Raiders!

And drumroll please …. the $5,000 GRAND PRIZE WINNERS …

HUSKY POWER: This team of two from Chesterfield, Virginia, collaborated seamlessly to create a well-balanced LEGO attachment. They even illustrated their planning with a claymation video. And they learned about protractors! These two wrapped their solution in a disaster-ridden story, complete with dry-ice volcanoes (don’t worry it ends well). Out of thousands of 6–8 teams, this well-earned $5K grant grand prize goes to . Katelyn and Claire of Husky Power!

CODE CRACKERS: This grand prize winning team is based in Massachusetts, and they had one of the most creative attachments with a string-drawn swing arm and trap door release.These four team members shared their thought process through detailed logbooks complete with labeled diagrams and photographs. They had a grand multimedia final presentation full of scientific thinking. This team even persevered when a pipe burst at their school this past winter, What determination, dedication, and teamwork. Congratulations to Riley, Charlie, Tommy, and Aiden of Code Crackers!

An addition to the grand prizes, our top ten teams will be receiving certificates, t-shirts, and robots for each team member. Stay tuned next week on our blog for some honorable mentions too!

And we also wanted to share what China and Korea did this year. We had friends of Wonder Workshop help spearhead local Wonder League Robotic Competitions. China had 337 teams participate, and chose the Transformers as the winners for ages 6–8 and The Light of China for 9–12. They also recognized Lingtong and the Eagles for best journaling and best attachment design. Korea had 108 teams participate. They awarded 1st place to Code Sketch for ages 9–12 and Dash-n-Play for ages 6-8. Congratulations!

So many great examples of creative problem solving with coding and robotics from across the globe this year. We thank our WLRC teams for their dedication, perseverance, and critical thinking. And let’s not forget the dedicated coaches. Big cheers to them!

Join us again next year for new missions and adventures … IF you’re up for the challenge! Check out announcements on our site at www.makewonder.com/robotics-competition See you next time!