Caledonia — Students became the teachers in a recent STEM class, when sixth-graders Tyler Groenhout and Jackson VanderBand taught their classmates how to code drones.
The duo stayed up several late nights to put together an official lesson plan and think of answers to any questions their peers might ask.
“We had the slideshow, but I also talked based on what I know (about drones),” Jackson said. “Coming into it, we were pretty nervous about it, but then we saw everyone was having fun.”
Sixth-graders were already learning coding basics in STEM class by playing CodeCombat games; the drones took their skills to another level.
Tyler and Jackson used CoDrone EDU programmable drones and explained step-by-step how to write basic block-based code in Blockly, an online program compatible with the drones.
‘Coming into it, we were pretty nervous about it, but then we saw everyone was having fun.’
— sixth-grader Jackson VanderBand
“The coding tells it what to do while it’s in the air,” Tyler said. “Without touching the controller, you can make it do a ton of things.”
Students learned how to order a series of flight commands on their computers, which communicated directions to the drone. They could decide how fast or far the drone traveled once it was airborne, and change the colors of the LED lights.
They also gave the class an important lesson in drone safety.
“You need to pay attention when you’re flying them,” Tyler said. “You can’t touch them while they’re in motion, make sure they take off from a flat surface and keep it away from your hair.”
STEM teacher Becky Sowerby said she reviewed her students’ lesson before they presented it to her class and was “blown away” by her students’ efforts.
“The slide deck was immaculate,” she said. “They legit taught an entire hour and everyone was listening to them.”
New Hobbies Take Off
Tyler said his interest in learning to fly drones started at home, with guidance from his dad, Chris, an aeronautics teacher at Grandville High School.
“My dad taught me how to fly an outdoor drone a while ago,” he said. “One day he brought home a (CoDrone EDU), and I wanted to learn how to code it.”
For his last birthday, Tyler was given his own indoor drone and started bringing it to school to fly with Jackson during free time.
“Tyler and I could go out in the hallways to fly them and it was really cool, so I started to get into it and he taught me how to code it,” Jackson said.
The two are now challenging their coding skills by learning how to write text-base code using Python for Robolink.
“Python is really hard,” Jackson said.
Tyler added: “When you’re trying to learn, it’s trial and error. (Python) doesn’t tell you what’s wrong, so you have to go back through the commands and figure out what went wrong.”
‘They legit taught an entire hour and everyone was listening to them.’
— STEM teacher Becky Sowerby
Their goal is to eventually teach their drone coding lesson to all the sixth-grade STEM classes at their school.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to take it to the middle school next year, and then eventually to the high school,” Jackson said. “It’s great seeing everyone have fun and do something different in STEM.”
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