Crane board elects officials, hears LEGO team report

A new board president and clerk were elected for the Crane Elementary School District board for the 2013 year at a meeting Tuesday.

Both unanimously elected by fellow board members, Karen Johnson was selected as the new president and Steve Pallack as the clerk.

The group also decided to continue holding its monthly school board meetings on the second Tuesday of every month at 5 p.m. with work sessions prior to the meeting at 4:30 p.m., or as necessary.

Additionally during the meeting, the “Wolfpack” robotics team from Centennial Middle School spoke to the board about being one of 54 teams to participate in the FIRST LEGO League State Championship Tournament at Arizona State University last month.

The Wolfpack group was one of three Yuma teams that qualified for the state tournament after placing first at the annual Yuma Regional FIRST LEGO League Tournament. The other two teams were the Somerton Middle School “Cobratrons” and the Woodard Junior High School “First Century Robotics.”

Superintendent Bob Klee said that while the Wolfpack team didn't place in the top three spots in Phoenix, it was a great feat for the team to have made it to the state tournament after only having the program on campus for the past two years.

“LEGO Robotics involves building and programing a robot to complete complex tasks on a predetermined game board. The students do all of the work themselves, and also must develop a project that is an important part of the scoring,” said Klee. “The Wolfpack team's project involves the creation of a team of students to help senior citizens make better use of all the different technologies out there including PCs, laptops, tablets, Facebook, Twitter and Google. The team hopes to actually put this project into practice later in the year.”

Centennial seventh-grade science teacher Steve Smith explained that it was great to not only see the students participate in the competitions and come together as a team, but also to want to take their project to the next level.

Team captain Jakob Hunter explained that the team is talking about traveling around town to help seniors use technology. He shared that he thinks it's an important job because sometimes senior citizens are lonely and wish to communicate with loved ones that may live in a different city.

“It is something that we have on the drawing board,” said Smith about the continuation of the project. “It was a project the students came up with and it got such great reception and we know there's such a need for it so we thought it's something we might really want to do.”

Log onto www.azfll.com for more information about FIRST LEGO League.

Sarah Womer can be reached at swomer@yumasun.com or 539-6858. Find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/YSSarahWomer or on Twitter at @YSSarahWomer.