If you’ve followed any of our blogs or even our social media accounts for any amount of time, you know we like promoting the use of technology in education. This can range from beginner-level circuitry kits to computers kids build themselves to interactive robotics or coding with breadboards and microcomputers. Whatever is the latest piece of technology adapted for the classroom, we’re working to sell teachers, schools and districts on the importance of making sure their students have access to it. Next up on the long list of innovative EdTech? Drones.
Using Drones in the Classroom
When it comes to tapping and ballooning student creativity with technology, educational drones among the latest crazes to infiltrate future-facing schools. As a teaching tool alone, there is so much that students can learn about technology by controlling drones. When they’re used to expand student creativity, however, that’s when their real value is found. Drones offer students the opportunity to participate in projects they have never done before by literally bringing brand new angles to photography, video and exploration. They’re not bad at increasing student engagement and modernizing classroom projects, either! Ideally, drone-based projects are most applicable to high school-aged students, though there may be some advantages to having junior high students work with them too.
Part of the reason they’re so conducive to the high school grades is that many of their capabilities lend themselves to things that go on in high schools. Yearbooks, for instance, now tend to be created by the school’s photojournalism class, so working drone photography into assignments can make for some pretty impressive and innovative photos by the end of the year. Whether students capture some athletic action or shoot a new home page photo for the school’s Web site, drones can help them in entirely unique ways. Drones can also expand environmental science opportunities far beyond textbooks. Using drones, students can potentially try anything from observing the impacts of farming, mapping local wetlands and tracking native wildlife—all of which are more engaging that reading a book!
To take it a step further, teachers can incorporate drones into robotics and engineering clubs or classes. Specifically, teaching students how drones are constructed and maybe even taking one apart, is something they just might enjoy. Students are usually pretty intrigued by the opportunity to pilot a drone, especially if they get to do it instead of their normal school day routines. Take advantage of this interest and use it as an opportunity to build innovation skills at the same time! Pretty soon, they’ll be delivering goods, landing in unchartered areas and perhaps even engaging other drone-using classrooms in online communities. They’re not even that expensive! Eduporium sells four models with the cheapest one available for $139!
Drones Help Student Imagination SOAR
Experts argue that the problem with education today is not the content being taught, but rather the manner in which it is delivered. Drones offer students and teachers an incredibly unique outlet for improving education and adding a technology twist in the process. Even before they start piloting a drone, students will not be able to contain their excitement. Knowing they’ll be given this incredible opportunity, in the weeks and days leading up to an educational activity so innovative, they won’t be able to wait to get started! When handled properly, drone use in the classroom can provide unmatched immersion into the worlds of technology and physics for students.
One helpful system, as indicated by the title of this post, is for teachers to help students SOAR when using drones in school. The most important thing in drone lessons is Safety, followed by knowing how the drone and the software Operate, making sure Active learning is constantly happening and encouraging students to Research the practical applications of drone use. We have every reason to believe that these kinds of high-interest activities will be able to positively impact student achievement. Drones provide students with an opportunity to build skills by immediately applying them to a career-like situation—a truly realistic representation of the real world. Plus, the technological aspects help students develop equally important STEM skills in the process.
With any new EdTech tool, educators are not only met with the challenge of implementing it, but also with making it jive with the curriculum. One of the benefits of drones is that they are tools that can help teachers differentiate their lessons to reach kids more effectively. For project-based learning, drones can offer a revamped form of student-centered education, immersing them deeper into their learning experiences. Drone use is continuing to grow in all industries, from education and agriculture to food delivery and, of course, security. With this emergence, many new jobs are being created, which suggests that it would be beneficial for students to become comfortable with drones. Getting a start in the latter half of their education could be all that they need to become successful in the field later on down the road.
7 Ways to Use Drones in the Classroom
For educators determined to present content in an innovative way and literally see their school from brand new angles, you might want to consider teaching with drones. Especially at schools that have large campuses or interesting external environments, drone flying can uncover areas students have never seen and teach them all sorts of things in almost any subject. Once we realized how pertinent drones can actually be to augmenting the entire curriculum, the idea of teaching with them became that much more exciting. How effectively drones are used sometimes depends on teacher creativity and the amount of planning that goes into lessons, but they do have potential to bring learning alive all day long.
Projects with drones include both short- and long-term activities that students can complete collaboratively. While there is presumably only one drone available to the class, students will still benefit a great deal from working together to accomplish their goals. In Social Studies classes, for example, students can compare the current landscape of their town or area to what it used to look like 100 or 200 years ago. In ELA classrooms, drones can help illustrate the importance of different points of view or photos can be captured and used to have students write the story of what they think that section of land is used for—or used to be used for thousands of years earlier. Even in Physical Education, kids can dissect their football plays (just like the pros) or map a course on which they can later run the mile.
In a math class, students can incorporate numbers while zooming out of their shots by powers of five or 10, making note of the differences in the land as they go. As for science, have kids pretend they’re cells and photograph them up close. Then, zoom out and teach them about the environment in which these cells live. Drones can even be helpful in community building classes or during Alternative Spring Break. Students can use the drone to shoot a video that will serve as a public service announcement to advocate for increased school recycling, playground clean-up or something else creative. Finally, since drones are constantly in the news, feel free to incorporate them into current events classes. Use the subject as a center for debate on the privacy issues they pose or have students discuss the positive and negative impacts of drone delivery services. Sounds like you’ll be busy!
Combining Drones with Art Class
You may have gotten the impression from the way drones are portrayed in the news that they are high-tech machines used for high-tech projects. When you read about us wanting to incorporate drones into education, you probably thought of STEM subjects and not English or Art. While this is certainly true a lot of the time, drones can actually be used in simple education projects as well. In more ways than one, drones can be a powerful way of adding technology and a 21ST century element to art class and we’ll tell you why and how you should do that.
Artists know that inspiration is sometimes everything when it comes to producing that perfect portrait. For students who might not necessarily be interested in what they consider to be one of the more boring school subjects, the added excitement of drone technology could recapture their intrigue. All you need to do is set out on a fairly brief flight around the town. While in the air, students should try to capture as many stunning picture as possible—especially of areas they might not be all that familiar with. Back in the classroom, they can then create paintings or drawings of the scenes they shot from their drone, creating works they can display portrayed from angles they otherwise would never have been able to reach.
Since it is the 21st century after all and the age of social sharing, students can then create a space where they can each post and share their shots online. And, since they’ll probably be really impressive, teachers should also encourage students to share them on social media and perhaps engage people with similar hobbies as well. Hopefully, during their flight, students will find new inspiration and creatively apply it to their art classes and other subjects throughout the school year. Especially for tech-savvy 21st century educators, drones can be a powerful tool for bringing STEAM full circle by combining one of the world’s newest technologies with the age-old importance of artistic beauty. Try it out this coming school year!
Drones Among New Technologies Arriving in Schools
Like it or not, drones in education do not appear to be going anywhere or leaving the technology scene any time soon. They’re the latest in a long line of tech tools to make their way into K-12 classrooms, joining the likes of laptops, 3D printers, and robots. Technology and, as a result, education have entered a new age and we’re starting to see things that were once considered science fiction dreams becoming common and necessary in K-12 classrooms. While drone technology is still essentially in its infancy, it is poised to become one of the next crucial tools for shaping 21st century students and skills.
These technologies are generally more readily available to higher education students, but there has been an increasingly strong push to fill K-12 classrooms with them as well. Introducing young kids to these powerful tools as early as elementary school could have phenomenal effects on their skill development and enrich their tech-savvy minds even further. Simply by incorporating advanced technology—like drones—into common class work, students can amplify a geometry lesson by actively landing a quadcopter on a platform in the middle of a field, precisely illustrating angles and vectors right before their eyes. Aside from getting to know how the hardware in drones works, students would also be exposed to the fundamentals of coding, which is one of the most in-demand skills of the 21st century. And, it’s what makes drone movement and flight possible.
Research shows that by the time they reach middle school, a lot of students (especially girls) have already decided not to pursue a STEM career. Offering an engaging and irresistible introduction to technology in the form of drone-based learning could be one way to combat this trend. Drone-based learning offers kids the chance to become actively engrossed in a specialized form of computer science, but, like all new curriculum ideas, it must start with teacher knowhow. Professionals who use this technology on a daily basis are an invaluable resource for schools to consider in teaching their teachers how to teach their students. It may not be pain-free, but could soon become necessary and will certainly help kids get as comfortable as possible with modern-day technology.
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