For my externship this summer I had the privilege of working under Dr. Jae Ryu with the iDrone, Interstate Drone League, program. Dr. Ryu’s iDrone program is hands-on where students build their own drone and learn drone fundamentals at the same time.

I was also able to participate in the externship program the previous two summers with Dr. Ryu. During those two summers I was a facilitator for his online iDrone camp for students grades 6th thru 12th. I was the coordinator for students from Rigby, Idaho and was able to host 26 total students on-site. I was also able to invite 12 fifth graders to the camp and spend an extra day with only them so that they would be better prepared for the iDrone camp. My favorite part of this experience was facilitating students in building a drone from scratch and then transferring their drones into an iRobot. Another part of my externship last year was to write a 2-week drone unit for 5th graders based on Dr. Ryu’s iDrone camp. I used this knowledge to assist me with my externship project this year.

This year I was able to attend the iSTEM Summer Institute at the College of Western Idaho and participate in the drone program that Dr. Ryu facilitated. During this week I was able to participate with other educators across Idaho in learning how to bring Dr. Ryu’s iDrone program into the classroom. We were also able to hear from two guest speakers with drone experience. Our first guest speaker was from the the College of Western Idaho and was based out of the agriculture department. We learned how CWI currently uses drones with crops. Our second guest speaker was from College of Eastern Idaho. Our guest showed us how to fly a drone and let us experience flying one also. My time during this week helped me better understand building drones from an educator’s perspective.

For my final externship project I worked with Renee Nigon, a 6th grade teacher from Sandpoint, Idaho, to create a combined 5th/6th grade drone unit. Our driving question of the unit was, “How can we as students design a solution to a real-world, community problem using drone technology to improve our local communities?” In order to answer this question, we first addressed drone fundamentals, the history of drones, drone uses around the world, and coding. to students in a manner that allowed them to have a strong foundational understanding that they could use in future lessons to build a working drone. for our unit, we utilized resources from Dr. Ryu’s iDrone camp in order to align with the work done in his camp and make it more accessible to both educators, 5th grade students, and 6th grade students.

Over the past few years, I have learned a lot about drones including the increasing demands and uses.