Early drone usage was only for military purposes, but with the expanding technology and scope, drones now boast of diverse capabilities and applications. People always had a fascination for flying, and with drones becoming handy, people of all ages were excited to fly these unmanned aerial vehicles. 

Apart from the consumer usage of taking amazing pictures and videos from above, drones are also used for rescue missions, to survey crops, gather data for conservation, and deliver healthcare supplies.

Drones are also being used for education, as a well suited aid to enhance learning on the topic of robotics.

Here is how students can use drones to learn:

Improve creative thinking

The teacher in the classroom can capture an image using a drone and can ask the students to describe in a clear way, creating a picture in the minds of their peers without showing the picture. Thus, the students’ descriptive language skills can be developed and they can acquire the rich vocabulary needed for their careers. Not only vocabulary and language skills, students can also improve their creativity in this way.

Improve cognitive skills

Drones are a powerful tool to aerially survey an area, and capture video footage of places that would otherwise not be accessible. The facilitator can train the  students on valuable mapping skills, and also educate them about the change in a landscape over a period of time. 

Improve depth perception skills

Young people need to learn fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination for playing games and sports. While some may learn these skills with ease and without much effort, there are certain kinds of students who cannot learn these easily. Drones can help in such cases, for example, students can learn to judge distances in space while flying a drone. If any miscalculations happen, they can keep practicing safely till they learn completely. Learning about spatial awareness can be helpful to develop a career in landscape architecture, photography and aviation, etc.

Improve fitness

Flying a drone cannot be done indoors, one needs to get outdoors and be more active. We can use drones to film students while they are practicing; these videos can be seen later to learn their mistakes and improve their movement, posture and techniques. Aerial photography reveals better angles and better footages where one can see and learn without any further assistance.

Improve analytical skills

Active learning enhances the learning ability and students tend to learn better and faster via hands on exercises. Engaging the participants in active learning is possible through drones. They can learn about programming in their classes and can practically apply them on drones and command drones what to do. They can also measure distances, check for angles, and monitor progress in their learning.

Improve social skills

Young students can even learn social skills through the usage of drones as a group of aviation buffs. They create friendship and all of them team up and learn from each other. The attendance percentage also goes up and children tend to come to school to attend sessions as it becomes more and more interesting.

We have seen a bunch of interesting ways to put drones to use in our academia. But, there are important rules and regulations for drone usage in schools, colleges and  universities. There should be no breach of privacy, no carrying of weapons through drones, and no cheating during examinations, etc. If used in its proper way, drones have a high potential to  become a  wonderful  learning  aid for students. 

Hardware and software for student drone projects

Long gone are the days when working with drones was complicated and expensive; now with the availability of open hardware and enterprise grade software stacks, building drone projects has become feasible and cheap for students and enthusiasts. 

With open stacks like PX4 and Ardupilot, and a plethora of hardware supporting such stacks, this has opened the doors for students to venture into the world of robotics and build scalable solutions over enterprise grade applications like FlytNow.  Working with enterprise grade application will give students exposure to features like:

• Live Video streaming and recording.
• Thermal camera integration.
• Multi-Cam video feed.
• Custom map integration over a dashboard. 
• Multi-user management. 
• Drone control using keyboard and mouse. 
• AI-features like object detection, precision landing and collision avoidance. 

Summary

Drone tech could be the next big tool in empowering education systems throughout the world in various fields of study.

Hope you had fun and also gained few valuable insights from reading this, let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.