Expanded for 2017–2018

Are you ready for YEAR THREE of the Wonder League Robotics Competition? Last year, in our second Wonder League Robotics Competition, we had more than 20,000 kids participate from 52 countries. With five fierce rounds of story-based missions over 10 weeks, we ended up with 60 teams competing in a final round for five top spots in the 6–8 age category and five top spots in the 9–12 age category. All ten finalists impressed us with their clever solutions, original designs, teamwork, and persistence. We were astounded by the sophisticated scientific thinking teams demonstrated in their final videos.

Based on feedback from our dedicated coaches, we’ve decided to change the framework a bit in order to invite more participants into this free virtual competition. This year, we are expanding the window of opportunity (Sept 2017 — Feb 2018), allowing for more flexible participation. Also, the first three rounds will be judged by you — the coach, the school, the town, or a company or organization. We had a lot of interest at the local level, where folks wanted to build community spirit by recognizing their participating teams. So for the first three rounds, we will be sharing best practices for evaluating, judging, and recognizing your team’s efforts. These first three missions also will help build students’ skill sets when it comes to coding languages, robotics, design, and scientific thinking; the three rounds will get progressively tougher.

You can decide if you want your team(s) to participate in Round 1, Round 2, and/or Round 3! Meanwhile, we at Wonder Workshop will keep track of all teams’ participation, and the teams engaging in all three rounds and meeting all participation criteria will then be invited to join a final Invitational Round. This culminating Invitational Round (March/April 2018) will be the most challenging, and we will again choose five winning teams for ages 6–8 and five winning teams for ages 9–12. The top team in each age category of the Invitational Round will receive a $5,000 STEM grant, and each member of the four runner-up teams will receive a Dash robot.

How do you join? Register your teams today. Then, join our Coaches’ Cohorts on www.edmodo.com with invitation codes 82kphg for the ages 6–8 Coaches Cohort or 3p7g9u for the ages 9–12 Coaches Cohort! The first mission will be released on September 18th, and the first three missions’ submissions are due February 16, 2018. The Invitational Round will take place in March and April of 2018.