St. Peter’s School students gain new perspectives through drone education
These students are learning about drones and programming software at St. Peter's Lutheran School in Reedsburg. (Submitted photo)
Things are looking up for sixth graders at St. Peter’s Lutheran School in Reedsburg.
Teacher Matt Dehn introduced drone flying to his repertoire of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) classes. Students are not only learning how to manually fly drones but also program them with pre-planned flights. The kids use software on their Chromebooks to code programs, which send the drones skyward.
Dehn said he added the class because drones are such a common sight in today’s world. Not only do people use them for recreation, but businesses also employ them for projects. They can be found in agriculture, construction, railroad and electrical industries.
Dehn recently completed his commercial license to fly drones.
“Getting my UAS license from the FAA was a very important part of teaching this course,” he said in a statement. “I want to make sure that I am teaching the kids how to use drones safely and legally. I am hoping that through this class students will get an appreciation for coding and get them excited about the STEM fields. Hopefully, in the future, some of my students will be able to give back to their communities by flying drones as a volunteer with the fire and police departments or full-time commercially.”
The goal is for students to be able to program multiple drones, resulting in a “swarm” of them. To accomplish this benchmark, students will use programming that has been utilized for the Olympics and Super Bowl half-time shows.
This story was submitted by St. Peter’s Lutheran School.
