More than 50 local teachers Friday got a chance to compete against one another as part of Jacksonville State University’s Vex robotics training course.

Through a grant, the university is working to train local teachers to take robotics into classrooms throughout the state. But before the students can get their hands on the machines in the classroom this year, the teachers had their fun Friday morning.

The university is in the second year of a three-year grant program with the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation, which provides the robots and training opportunities for high school and middle school teachers in the area.

The goal is to stretch the grant money, more than $750,000, to have a trained robotics teacher at more than half of the schools in the area.

On Friday, the teachers were competing in games similar to the ones used at official Vex robotic competitions. The middle school competition involved using a joystick to get the robots to move plastic blocks from one area to another, and stack them on top of each other.

The high school competition involved building plastic poles with the robots, and then placing blocks over them. The competition involved driving the robots with a controller, as well as programming the robots’ moves ahead of time in 15-second intervals.

The grant has already been successful, and the university attracted more than 30 teams last year to the first statewide Vex competition.

One of those teams, led by Randy Rainey, learning coordinator at the Cherokee County Career and Technological Center, ended up going to the world robotics competition in Anaheim, Calif., after winning the state competition at JSU.