AV News: Drone STEM: Sport of the Future?

Schools across the world are finding new ways to get students more involved in learning. Now, one Idaho drone company has teamed up with a popular after school program to bring flight technology into the classroom. Ryan Hoag has the story:

Dahlton Grover is the Director of Business Development and Content Coordinator for PCS Edventures. "It was about a year and a half ago that we started diving into drone curriculum as an advanced robotics platform for our high school students.

PCS Edventures is a leading STEM Program that focuses on hands on learning. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

"If you think about robotics competitions that are happening across the country, we thought, okay how can we take it to the next level, and it was taking it to the next level with drones."

And that's where Thrust-UAV comes in.

"Thrust-UAV was weirdly in our backyard and so we developed this partnership with them--they helped us develop our initial drone curriculum"

"We actually worked together in building specialized copters for their educational programs and they would sell them all over the world and one of the biggest that I worked on for them was they were dealing in Saudi Arabia ."

"So I mentioned robotics competitions earlier, so we want to do that on a drone level. So just imagine it being the sport of the future on the high school level, so you know like lettering, lettering and drone racing, it's an incredible opportunity not only for students to learn but perhaps for those not interested in physical sports still able to feel that sense of camaraderie, that experience of a competitive environment."

Despite a successful collaboration, PCS realized their ultimate challenge is the same that most educational programs face: money.

"What we've been really trying to do is partner up with corporate sponsors that are really inspired to bring more STEM education to the high school students because ultimately we are preparing students for UAV pilot positions that never existed before."

And they're in it for the long haul because they see the potential of positively impacting so many students over time.

"Maybe they have a heart condition and they've always wanted to be a part of this team, be part of a sport--this is for them. It's considered the sport of the future because you know, this is the age of the geek, it's the brute force of the mind that you're going to be using in this sport.

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