Students from across Emirate of Abu Dhabi come in 1st place in WRO Arabia

Speaking about the initiative, Dr. Najla Alraway Alnaqbi, Educational Technology Expert, Programme Manager, Strategic Planning and Special Projects 'Office of Strategic Affairs' at ADEC, said, "While ADEC was the first to launch WRO Arabia, it's also a fortunate coincidence that ADEC representatives have been nominated by existing members of the WRO Advisory Council (the controlling body of the WRO competition) to become part of the committee, and to help run WRO international. We are the first group of representatives to be selected for the task outside Asia, apart from Denmark."

The selection process coincided with the success of the Abu Dhabi Regular Category teams, who despite the challenging competition regulations in Doha, managed to come in 1st and 2nd place.

After the participation of over 300 public and private school teams from across the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the National Robot Challenge, a group of 18 teams from the UAE were selected to take part in WRO - Arabia in Doha Qatar, where over 300 school children from across the MENA region participated. The event took place on October 20th.

Three out of the 18 teams came in 1st and 2nd place during the WRO Doha competition, namely: the Al Tamayouz School in Al Ain led by Coach Mr. Yahya Mosameh and students Mr. Abdulla Hamad Alkuwaiti, Mr. Mohammed Abdul Alblooshi and Mr. Khaled Mohammed Alali. The school/team won 1st prize for the Junior High School - Preparatory level in the Regular Category.

Coach Ms. Monica G. Solis and her team members Mr. Omar Osama Abdelrahman, Mr. Muhammad Daniesh Syahiran and Mr. Ahmed Khaled Al Hadrami from the International Jubilee Private School, came in 1st place for the Elementary School - Primary level in the Regular Category.

The Khorfakkan Child Center came in 2nd place for the Elementary School - Primary Level in the Regular Category, with Mr. Nouredinne Ben Labidi as coach, and students Ms. Shahad Almarshadi, Ms. Shamsa Alnaqbi and Mr. Sultan Naqbi.

Despite the three teams winning, most of the 18 teams initially selected to travel to WRO in Doha will be joined by four UAE Robot Football teams to participate in the 2012 WRO final in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The event titled: 'Robots Connecting People' is due to take part from November 9th to 11th 2012.

School Principal for the Al Tamayouz School, Mr. Abdul Aziz Alblooshi, spoke about how proud he is that the three school students from Al Tamayouz School came in 1st place. "We have dedicated a special laboratory for students interested in robots to work in and have dedicated a special team of IT and Math teachers to help train those who are interested in the hobby," he added.

"Those students represent the UAE and have definitely raised our heads across the world. Thanks to ADEC's efforts in investing in this initiative, without them we definitely couldn't have accomplished this success. I am confident that those students will have fruitful future career paths. They are young, dedicated and motivated, not to mention extremely intelligent and hardworking. They are also academically among the top performers," said the school principal.

Their coach, Mr. Yahya lauded ADEC's efforts in providing him with the all the material necessary to help teach the students. ADEC provided me and the students with all the materials we needed to assemble a robot. Even though the Doha competition was not easy, we still came in 1st place, and I am so proud of our students for their efforts. Khaled despite being the youngest out of the three was in charge of the programming and helped re-assemble the robot. The other two boys were asked to re-assemble the robot and we managed to that in record time due to their superb teamwork skills and dedication to win. We look forward to taking part in the finals and have high hopes that we can accomplish a winning strand once again.

Khaled's father, Mr. Mohamed Moen Al Ali, spoke about how he was hesitant about sending his 13 year old son, Khaled, to Doha and now to Malaysia, however after he witnessed the excitement and happiness his son felt, he changed his mind. "I was teasing Khaled the other day and telling him that he cannot travel to Malaysia and that caused my son to tear. I then realized that his heart, mind and soul are into this activity, and that there is no reason why I shouldn't help promote a potential my son has. I am very proud of him and encourage him to compete if that's what he wants to do. I am also very grateful to his coach, school principal and to ADEC for helping him release his real potential which is Math's and Science. His teachers are so good to him that my son actually spoke about being a Math's or Science teacher in the future, similar to his teacher's profession," he added.

Ms. Monica described the success of her team in the International Jubilee Private School as 'a huge accomplishment'.

She went on to say, "One of my students, Mohamed Daniesh is only 11 years of age, yet he was anxious to win alongside his peers. We didn't expect to win that easily when we competed in Doha because unlike the competition in Abu Dhabi, we had to go through two qualifying rounds, then the quarter finals, then the semi finals and then the finals. It was a long tedious process but a great challenge. All along we were extremely anxious, but the minute we found out we won, we were on top of the moon. We have high hopes for the finals."

When asked how he felt about winning, Grade 5 student Mohamed Daniesh, said, "I am so happy and excited and can't wait to compete in Malaysia." "The experience was a bit stressful especially since I'm the youngest in my team, but I love robots and I just did what I love most," said the 11 year old.

His mother Salina Mahat described her son's success as 'the result of his hard work and encouragement from his school and ADEC'.

She said, "My son has been reading about robots since he was 7 years old and has been taking part in serious reading since he was 5. I believe it's all about your child's potential. The minute you realize what your child is good at, you should, as a parent, help encourage it. The support we received to help improvise on Mohamed's talent was also un-describable."

Dr. Alnaqbi was impressed with how the UAE team excelled in such a short period of time. "We are very happy with the results we've witnessed among our WRO teams, since WRO is rather new to the UAE region. Other countries have been familiar with the activity for years and years, we've only just introduced it across schools. So given the short time span students have had, this is a great accomplishment; one that I'm confident will keep thriving in the months and years to come. I look forward to see our teams compete in Malaysia," she concluded.