Yes, You Can Use Drones in the Classroom!

Like most of my educational adventures, it all started one day when I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if...?"

Most times, that question ends with really cool projects for my students that allow them to demonstrate their newly acquired skills. This time, however, I was reading about how indigenous people in South America were using drones to protect their land from illegal logging and gold mining. I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could find a meaningful way to incorporate drones into my classroom?"

The key question to ask is, "Why drones in the classroom, at all?"

I go to one of my favorite brain researchers, Dr. John Medina and his Brain Rules. He lists several rules that help teachers to engage the brains of our students and drones in the class specifically addressed:

ATTENTION: We don't pay attention to boring things.
SENSORY INTEGRATION: Stimulate more of the senses.
EXPLORATION: We are powerful and natural explorers.

I began to assess where this technology could fit. The most logical parallel in my History class was exactly how the Wapishana Tribe of Guyana were using the technology, to create maps. I decided to use drones to have my students demonstrate their understanding of mapping skills and techniques.

Thanks to camera technology and access to their lap tops, students had all of the tools necessary to create accurate and usable maps. Student learned about parts of a map and strategies used in surveying and cartography and applied these lessons to creating their own maps of our campus.

Students enjoyed using the remote controlled drones for an educational purpose, but they also had the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of mapping skills. This projects was much more engaging than the tests I took as a student. The available technology allowed students to demonstrate their understanding in a way that was truly impossible just 5 years ago.

In true John Dewey fashion, we reflected on our maps and discussed how we could improve upon the maps we created. The students identified a key consideration- our drones took pictures from an aerial perspective, but a bird's eye perspective may be needed to get true scale for our maps. Wouldn't it be cool if we worked collaboratively with our 3D Design class to prototype a rigging that we could use to mount the drone cameras to provide a bird's eye perspective?

This is something to look forward to next year!

Please leave comments if you have any questions or need further clarification of this awesome and exciting activity.

Checkout my YouTube channel: Chaka Cummings (The Dedicated Educator). Also, find me on LinkedIn and check out some of my published posts on education.