Drones, coding, 3D printing – Middle school kids learn on the fly

When it sounds like a bunch of wasps swarming around, but instead, it’s only a bunch of middle school kids steering unmanned aerial vehicles, then you know it’s drone camp.

Hosted by Lawton Public Schools (LPS) last week at the Life Ready Center, 702 NW Homestead Dr, the camp was designed to teach the 50 middle school students who signed up about drones, coding, 3D printing, other tech, and especially to think and act independently.

“They did really well, especially when learning about technical problems,” Doris Biegler, LPS’s STEM coordinator and teacher technology trainer, said. “They learned to troubleshoot and fix it on their own. They almost never come to me anymore.”

The three most common problems with drones, Biegler said, were propeller issues, calibration, or old software that needed to be updated. Students needed to think outside the box and help each other get to the bottom of the issue at hand. And they did.

“This place is great, I made so many friends,” Sedona McElroy, 14, said. McElroy, who is going into eighth grade this fall, didn’t initially know about the camp and only found out when her mom signed her up. “Oh, that’d be cool,” McElroy recalled her thoughts when she found out, and she hasn’t regretted her excitement since.

“I learned basic coding and how to fly drones, how to make them and how to fix them,” she said. Although she has a small drone at home, she said she hadn’t been using it since last year.

Drone flying took place inside the gym, and there is a good reason for that. Biegler said drones couldn’t be flown outside due to a license requirement.

“We went over drone safety and we had to go over FAA rules,” Biegler recalled, saying that a license was needed to fly the drones outside. A license, she said, requires passing a test and a minimum age of 16.

The good news: According to Biegler, LPS is planning to offer drone classes for high school students that will also include taking the required test in order to obtain the necessary license to fly drones.