In the spring of 2018, I attended the Common Ground Conference in Ocean City, Maryland, where I had the pleasure of attending a session all about using drones in the classroom! The session focused on an after school drone club using Parrot Mambo Fly Drones. These cool little drones are very stable when they fly, making them perfect for beginning drone flyers. I immediately set to writing a Donor's Choose grant for some drones to start an after school club of my own. Much to my chagrin, the Parrot Mambo Fly drones were not available through Donor's Choose, so I was able to procure some Holy Stone HS170 Predator Mini Drones instead. These small, inexpensive drones are not quite as stable as the Parrot Mambo Fly drones, but they do have some advantages! Replacement parts are cheap, including batteries, motors, and propellers. They also come with a separate controller, so no external technology is necessary (unlike the Parrot which requires a device to fly). When the drones arrived, drone club was born! We meet once a month on select Thursdays after school. Right now we are still learning to fly our Holy Stone Predators, but the kids are loving the experience. Our first order of business was to create a drone safety guide. The students generated our drone "best practices" to make sure everyone was safe and had a good time!
We have also done research into real-world careers that make use of drones, including real estate photography, military use, and even the future of retail delivery! Here are some photographs from Drone Club... more to come as we expand our drone program! My next goal is to get us eight Parrot Mambo Fly mini drones (we currently have 2) so we can code them using Swift Playgrounds on the iPads. Look for a future blog post as it develops, and if you have any ideas for our drone club, drop a comment below and let me know!
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If you haven't met Botley yet, you NEED to hang out with this cool little guy and his fun personality! This battery driven robot requires no previous coding skill and no additional technology - he just needs you to be ready to problem solve! I found the perfect opportunity to use our Botley coding robot kits with our Life Skills students. With the easy, push-button remote and the fun activity cards included, my life skills kids were coding within seconds! First, the students explored creating line paths for Botley to follow using the puzzle-piece shaped cards included with the kit: Next, they tried experimenting with some of the accessories, including the blocks, flags, and circle goals! They used the accessories to make a goal for Botley to go and "grab" the square block with his two small arms, coding it with the remote control! They even created fun obstacle courses for Botley to navigate, and coded him to move through it: Using these Botley Robots with my life skills students was one of the most rewarding lessons I've done yet this year. These student-friendly robots truly allow anyone to code successfully!
How would YOU use Botley in your library? Drop a comment below and let me know! |
About the AuthorHi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Christine Hurley. This is my 17th year of teaching - I've taught Kindergarten, 4th grade, elementary media, and now I am in my 6th year of teaching middle school media! Archives
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