On Wednesday 28 February 2024, the children from the senior room made our way down to Cork for the VEX Robotics All-Ireland Championship competition. After receiving an invite after the Mucklagh competition, the hard work continued in preparation for the Cork competition with an opportunity to qualify to head to Dallas, Texas for the VEX World Championships. 

We didn't qualify to head to Texas but the children performed and represented the school so well. We placed 15th overall in the competition which is a fantastic achievement. Placing in the top 25 schools/teams is amazing but in the top 15 is another achievement. In the coding/programming/driver skills portion of the competition we placed 8th and also placed 8th in the finals. 

We would like to thank Ray Bell, Dean and David Hodge in Offaly County Council for their continued support and everything they have done for STEM in our school and all schools in the county. We would also like to thank them for subsidising payment for the bus and covering the cost of our Supermac's on the way home. Finally, we want to thank Munster Technological University for hosting the event and all the event organisers. It was so well organised and for making the day so enjoyable. 

What we have achieved this past few months with the Robotics and STEM in the school is fantastic. The children have learned so much and been given an opportunity I would hope they will continue to get involved in. The majority of the other schools and teams in Cork were all from larger school and for a small school like us to compete against these fantastic teams is a phenomenal achievement. You represented your school so well. 

Last Thursday 8th February we took part in the Vex Robotics Midlands Competition. Along with 15 other schools we put everything we have been preparing for into play.

Coolanarney NS secured a place in the All-Ireland Championships in Cork at the end of the month. 

We played 9 team match games. Each game we played with another school - different school each time. This is where both teams had to work together to score the highest amount of points as possible. The two teams had to communicate with each other who was going to score what, what can you robot do, what can't it do etc. The children performed really well in this portion of the competition. 

The next part of the competition was the Coding/Programming and Driver skills portion of the competition. We had the robot already coded (over the past number of weeks) to play the game. We placed the robot in the starting position, pressed play and the robot played the game from the programming we put together. Then we had a driver skills match where we played the game on our own. Two from the class played the game to aim to score the highest score possible. 

It was a really enjoyable day and the children performed so well. We placed 6th place overall in the competition when all the points were added together. In the driving skills and Coding/Programming portion of the competition we placed 2nd. And it was this 2nd place ranking that helped us secure a place in the All-Ireland Championships in Cork at the end of February. This is a great achievement for the children and the school. All the hard work paid off.

Roll on the All-Ireland Championships on the 28th February in Cork!!!

We're nearly ready for the Competition next week. The children have put in loads of hard work into playing the game, programming the robot and developing our driver skills. Everyone has really enjoyed getting to this point and can't wait to put all we have learned into play next week in Mucklagh when we participate in the Offaly Tournament.