English students bring Legos to life

LYNN – Three Lynn English High School students took a love for Legos, design and mechanical engineering to a new level when they participated in the Lego Mindstorms workshop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”We probably have eight square boxes filled with Legos and little tins all over the house,” said ninth-grader Connor Gallant. “I’ve been building things out of Legos forever.”Kseniya Synkevych, a junior, said she too played with Legos as a child, but she learned of the Mindstorm program from her pre-engineering teacher.”She called me, said she had gotten an email about it and thought I might be interested,” Synkevych said.And she was.Lego Mindstorm incorporates Legos, robotics and computer programming. Synkevych said they were tasked with building a framework from Lego parts, attaching it to the robot then programming the whole thing so that it could move through a maze.”There were none of the typical Legos, though,” said Gallant. “They were all little pieces, more advanced Legos.”Junior Danielle White, who also attended, said the hardest part was programming the Lego robot to move through what looked to be a simple maze.”It had to take left turns and right turns and zig-zag, and you had to code it to color sensors,” she said.White said she was drawn to the program because she’s fascinated with mechanical engineering. In the fifth grade she took part in Project Summit, where volunteers from GE ran a project similar to the MIT event.”It was much simpler but I learned that it was mechanical engineering and I’ve loved it ever since,” she said.Gallant said he was familiar with basic coding before taking part in the program, but he learned much more about working with color sensors during the three-plus-hour event.The students actually learned a lot at the event, in part because they were among only four who showed up. Two dozen were scheduled to attend, but Synkevych said due to the lack thereof, they received a lot of one-on-one attention.”We got to work (closer) with the counselors and be more focused,” she said.Synkevych teamed up with White for the project while Gallant teamed up with a student from another school. That proved to be an added challenge for Gallant.”It seemed like she had never built anything out of Legos in her life,” he said. “I wanted to be nice and help her out, but past experience tells me I don’t work well with others when it comes to building.”Gallant said they worked out their differences, however, and both teams finished the challenge and saw their creations work.”It felt so good in the end when it worked,” Synkevych said. “It was like a major accomplishment.”White said she would encourage the pre-engineering students, or any students for that matter, to take advantage of the program in the future.”Even if you don’t like it, it’s a good opportunity and you’ll learn something.”Guidance Counselor Matt Wilkins said he was impressed that the three took advantage of the events.”We post all these activities for kids to take advantage of, and these kids actually did it,” he said.