This summer for my externship, I worked with Dr. Jae Ryu from the University of Idaho. Dr. Ryu is the head of the iDrone program where most of my externship was based. During my externship, I participated in several different stem learning opportunities including two different drone camps.

At the beginning of my externship, I attended the iSTEM summer institute at the College of Western Idaho. I took a class where I learned the basics of coding and programing Microbits. This helped me to understand the very basics of programming which is needed to program a drone.

One of my favorite experiences was participating in the online iDrone camp for students grades 6th thru 12th hosted by Dr. Ryu. For this camp, 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.

My final project was to write a 2-week drone unit for 5th graders based on Dr. Ryu’s iDrone camp for middle and high school students. Creating this unit allowed me to tie my other extern experiences together into a final cumulating project.