LAST Friday, the assembly hall at Dunoon Technical High School was filled with robots and enthusiastic students, who were excited by the opportunity given to build and programme their own robots.

Dunoon Technical High was the third stop of the Halls of Learning school tour, which gives students the chance to creatively apply what they have learnt in Information Technology, Mathematics and Science.

When the TEENage team arrived, the 15 different teams were well on their way to completing their robots. The first team to finish consisted of Vaswanie Virgo, Sherise Mills and Carlos Patterson.

"We worked as a team," Mills beamed. She stated that she wishes to be a computer analyst, while Virgo stated that he wants to become an engineer.

While Patterson holds the dream of becoming a doctor, he states that if that dream doesn't come to fruition, "I want to do something that involves working with these (robots)."

Although this team had a lot to boast about, it was just the beginning for them and all the other 10 teams, who had successfully built their robots by lunch time.

This was because each team had to programme their robots to overcome three challenges: The Curve Turn, The Point Turn and The Maze. By lunch time, only six teams had started programming their robots, but no team had reached the first challenge.

Comparing previous participants Camperdown High and Vauxhall High, Marvin Hall, founder and CEO of Halls of Learning, stated that while Vauxhall built the robots faster, Camperdown completed most of the challenges. In fact, one group from Camperdown completed all the challenges successfully.

He stated that building the robots was not an indicator of how well a school would perform but the "real test" was the challenges.

Hall recalled that earlier in the day, a team member wanted to give up as she found that it was harder than she had expected.

"Not because something is hard it means you're to give up," he said to her. "Events like these make the Lego Yuh Mind initiative so fulfilling, because life lessons are learnt. These lessons teach that persistence is key, it's okay to make a mistake and effective teamwork can lead to success."

The next stop on this school tour will be Denham Town High School this Friday.