That droning sound…

Many of you saw the latest edition of Education Week | Australia Edition that Marcia sent out this morning. One of the articles of particular interest to me was about the increasing use of drones (or quadcopters, or flycams, etc.) in schools. Of particular interest, of course, because we just got a DJI Phantom 4 of our own! Yay!

Today, many students are building their own drones at school. Even more interesting: Students are learning how to build indoor obstacle courses and program their own flight plans to navigate them. So this is about math, computational thinking, spatial reasoning… all sorts of stuff going on in their heads. Read more to learn about the international competition #DronesinEd that Bret Salakas, a teacher in Sydney Australia, started.

For my part, I knew this quadcopter would be a really great tool for acquiring gorgeous aerial video of the campus, athletic events, our surrounding neighborhood, etc. But on my very first day with the Phantom, I realized that it has the potential for so much more! It just happens that the EC is studying a unit on motion, movement, and vehicles, and they came to watch me learning to fly it. We’ve since had a longer flying session with all the EC classes on how the quadcopter works, what it can do, and how to use it.

Just one more example of useful, transformative technology in the classroom—that would not have been possible just a few years ago.