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The First Lego League Science Heroes meeting took place in the nation’s capital, Ankara, celebrating its eleventh season. More than just a competition, the organization has created a full on science festival. Team Orta Legomania was ready, as always, with its robot project.

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The best way to summarize First Lego League is that it is a robotics program for nine to sixteen year olds, that is designed to get children excited about science and technology. Moreover, FLL Science Heroes aims to teach these bright youngsters valuable life skills that could help them secure gainful employment in their not too distant futures. Teams, composed of up to ten children with at least one adult coach, can also be associated with a pre-existing club or organization, just like our team: Orta Legomania. The work revolves around programming an autonomous robot (using the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robot set) to score points on a thematic playing surface, creating an innovative solution to a problem as part of their project, all while being guided by the FLL Core Values.

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Besides the robotic programming and the matches played on the thematic surfaces, every team competing in FLL Science Heroes have to work on a project that coincides with the competition’s theme. This year’s theme is “Your World, Your Classroom”. Team Orta Legomania received wide acclaim for their enlightening project “E.D.I”. The aim of the project is to develop an electronic device or application for hearing impaired persons, in order to improve their communication skills.

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At first the project was geared toward helping handicapped members of society, especially young people, on their communication skills. Team Orta Legomania had meetings with charities, non governmental organizations and government sections specialized in working with disabilities. While working on the project, Orta Legomania discovered that people with impaired hearing are having the most difficulties in school, with conventional learning. To push past this obstacle, team Orta Legomania started researching the possibility of a universal device or application for sign language. The team learned that there is such a common sign language, but it is only spoken by handicapped athletes competing at international level. In the end, Team Orta Legomania decided that one common application with an intuitive, easy to navigate user experience for sign language should be developed. Their recent progress has shown that such an application could be produced and be easily used by every one.

To see the pictures of FLL Science Heroes Turkey 2015 , visit http://on.fb.me/pictures

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