With DroneBlocks, STEM educators can build on student interest in flying drones and take it further with drones they can program! DroneBlocks is a free app that is compatible with Chrome, iPad, and Android devices and provides educators with great professional development tools and resources for helping them maximize their drone and coding instruction.
Teaching students about drones, their uses, and how to pilot them is amazing in its own right. When you incorporate the fact that some drones, like the Tello EDU, are programmable, then it takes drone education to a whole new level and the DroneBlocks professional learning content is a great way to get started.
DJI’s drones are great for teaching coding and piloting basics. Having long been a staple of our STEM education offerings, these drones offer unprecedented levels of excitement and a ton of educational value for students. They can literally use one tool to learn about piloting, shooting video, and coding, making the Tello EDU a great value.
A multi-tiered system of support is an instructional framework with three different tiers. Students receive instruction and support on a much more general scale in the first tier and then it increases in personalization as needed. Simultaneously, educators use the data and assessments to make informed decisions about what each student needs at each phase.
Our newest Featured Educator is Patti Andreolas, an elementary teacher from Queens, NY. Patti has become involved in a variety of innovative projects with her students, helping them develop both hard and soft skills in the classroom. Whether it’s with physical or digital EdTech tools, she’s seen how hands-on learning can impact how students develop.
The Matter and Form is a 3D scanner that quickly measures physical objects and turns them into digital 3D models for fabrication using any 3D printer. It’s laser-based and, when shining its laser at something, it captures thousands of data points from the laser that’s hitting the object, including its surface detail, distance from the camera, texture, and color.
Codesters is a digital programming platform that’s great for helping educators keep student coding opportunities flowing. In this week’s Rising Resources post, we’re exploring Codesters and what makes it a valuable tool for teaching coding in the classroom. To start, it’s free to sign up and helps make coding fun and challenging for students.
As always, we’re excited to see how the grant will help Bonni and her colleagues realize their collective mission of making greater progress in their STEM education programs. According to her, they’ve spent many years talking about how to evolve their STEM offerings and now find themselves in the right position to truly make it happen for their students.
If you’ll be in Atlanta for the GAETC, we encourage you to come by to learn more about our offerings or to just say hi. Among the happenings at our booth, we’ll display some educator favorites, including tech tools for the classroom, library, and makerspace and share the benefits of some of the other services we provide.
Whether it’s classroom teachers or challenges students themselves are facing, it’s a different environment when it comes to STEM instruction. Since the value of of these classes lies in their hands-on nature, it’s been quite a physical and mental adjustment trying to provide students with the experiences they need.
