Month: February 2022

For my assignments this week, I did research on each of the topics listed below:

• DroneSinger (the world’s #1 composer of parody songs about drones) 
• Pre-existing and freely available K-12 drone curriculums
• The Droneblocks app
• How to create standards-based curricula for K-12
• Education standards for Oregon and how to possibly include drone curricula within these standards

I also contacted Mr. Mario Magaña, a faculty member of OSU to schedule an informational interview, and I also attended Paul Catanese’s The Responsibility of Breath presentation as a part of the online Soundbox 5 festival hosted by OSU.

ATTENDING SOUNDBOX 5 PRESENTATION FEATURING PAUL CATANESE

This past week, I watched Paul Catanese’s presentation on his project called The Responsibility of Breath.  I thought that it was neat to hear about his project on looking at patterns of human sleep and what kinds of music and sounds those patterns can make.

I also enjoyed hearing about his work on his opera and other art projects that combined multiple forms of media (VR, videos, music performances, visual art, light and shadows and fog). I thought that combining multiple forms of art as different as something like singing with visual arts with STEM was really neat and something that I had never seen before.

Attending this event was really insightful to me. It was the first time I have been able to learn about what research being done through the arts can look like.

RESEARCH ON DRONESINGER

This week, I also did some research on DroneSinger – “The Weird AI of Drones”, the YouTube channel run by Victor Villegas. The channel features a variety of content, including parody songs about drones, ventriloquism, and puppets to talk about various topics, and videos highlighting performances by Mariachi STEAM camp students. The majority of the topics of videos on the channel are drone-related, such as drone safety and news events relating to drones, but also include videos about things like justice, equity, and inclusion, creative projects, and more.

The channel utilizes puppets, ventriloquism, humor, storytelling, drones, robots, and music to be able to reach its intended audience of underrepresented and underserved communities in order to promote STEAM education and career pathways to this group of people.

RESEARCH ON AVAILABLE DRONE CURRICULA AND DRONEBLOCKS

I began researching available drone curricula this week. One of the websites that I found was Drobot, which is a company that has created many different STEM curriculums that are available and usable by many different types of institutions (schools, learning centers, technology and maker-spaces, homeschool, private camps, after-school programs, non-profit organizations, and sports organizations), as well as STEM summer programs for K-12 students to attend (such as game design, robotics, animation, and more). These curricula are purchasable and licensable from Drobot, and there are different curricula available with different activities surrounding drones (some include drone dance and drone soccer, for example).

After looking at some of the information about the topics covered in the various available drone curricula, I saw that introducing safety before getting into the drone activities was something similar among all of them. However, each one slightly differed after that based on the focus of the curriculum. For example, the drone dancing curriculum includes looking at judging criteria for drone dancing competitions and looking closely at competition design and prep. This differed from other curricula, such as those that involved manually controlling the drones also place emphasis on going through a pre-flight checklist and how to use remote controls.

For many of the curricula that looked at autonomous drone flying, I noticed that a lot of them also included introductions to using DroneBlocks, which is an app that can be used by students for drone programming. I found out that DroneBlocks is an app that is downloadable, where anyone can use coding to program drones. Some of the ways that this can be done include using Blockly, Python, OpenCV, Node.js, and JavaScript to write code. DroneBlocks also has many curricula available for purchase and use by K-12 classrooms. Schools are able to purchase a subscription to have unlimited student access to the software and drone coding courses. I read that a part of the subscription also allows student access to a virtual simulator, which allows students to be able to explore drone coding if they have limited access to drones or space to fly drones in real life.

I downloaded the DroneBlocks app to explore it a little bit. I saw that the device which I had the app downloaded on gave me the option to connect to a drone via Bluetooth. I also saw the different coding options, such as using coding blocks or JavaScript. As someone who does not have much experience with coding yet, I really liked how block coding was an option on the app to make learning how to code drones more accessible to different experience levels.

RESEARCH ON STANDARDS-BASED CURRICULUM CREATION AND OREGON EDUCATION STANDARDS

As a part of this URSA Engage project, one of the projects that I will get to work on is creating a curriculum about drone coding for K-12 students. To prepare for this, I did some research on how to create standards-based curricula for K-12 students, and I also looked at some of the Oregon Education Standards and curriculum requirements.

A source that I looked at was the IRIS Center’s Curriculum Development modules, which talked about the steps to creating a standards-based curriculum. One of the first steps to creating a curriculum is becoming familiar with state education standards, such as the education standards from the Oregon Department of Education. The IRIS Center highlighted how there are performance standards, as well as content standards. Based on the standards, it is important for curriculum designers to figure out what subject areas need to be covered, as well as what knowledge, skills, and competencies must be taught. It is also important to consider the past curriculum topics that students will be coming into the course with, as well as the future curriculum topics that their learning will need to prepare them for.

From here, curriculum designers can plan out activities and materials to be covered in classes to help students develop the skills and knowledge required by the education standards. When doing this, it is important to consider how learning can be accessible and supportive for all students. Benchmarks can also be set by teachers at certain points in the curriculum to be able to assess student knowledge or progress towards standards. This allows teachers points during the school year to be able to evaluate student strength and needs to adjust their instruction accordingly to meet the needs of the students.

The types of ways that student learning can be evaluated can include individual-referenced (looking at how students have done compared to past performance), norm-referenced (evaluating against standards), and criterion-referenced (looking at how well students meet specific objectives). In addition, student performance can be evaluated indirectly (which involves inferring how well students are meeting certain objectives) or directly (where student performance can be directly observed). From here, the different topics and activities can be arranged into smaller units and ordered in a sequence that makes sense. Then, the units can be spaced out and planned based on the timing available (quarter, semester, etc.).

After looking at these tips for creating a curriculum, I visited the official website of the State of Oregon to look at the Oregon Department of Education’s Education Standards for K-12 students. Since creating a drone curriculum could fall under any of the categories of STEM, I looked at some of the education standards for science and math. However, I noticed the learning targets for many of the standards were quite specific, and there were also a lot of them. There were learning targets listed for each specific grade level. It made me realize that the curriculum standards can be very strict and specific, and it would be important to ensure that these criteria are all being met when designing a drone curriculum.

I also found a blog that talked about how learning about drones can be integrated into learning activities and subjects that are already being taught at schools. I thought that doing this could possibly be helpful if the design of a drone curriculum is not able to meet all the education standard criteria, as well as to allow students to be able to apply some of the things that they are learning to hands-on and drone-related activities. The blog article is called “Drones Can Be Fun – And Educational” by Heather Wolpert-Gawron.

An example activity mentioned in the blog was creating a really big grid and then allowing students to practice their math by coding drones to land on specific ordered pairs on the grid. Another example activity included having students debate current news and events about drones, such as looking at privacy concerns or the positive versus negative impacts of using drones, to learn about ethical practice while using drones. Connecting knowledge that students are already learning in school can allow drone education to be incorporated into school curricula that already exist.

As I previously mentioned in my Week 2 blog post, there are many benefits to including hands-on experiential and informal learning in K-12 education. As a result, connecting information that students are learning in school to learning about and interacting with drones can allow students to be able to apply the knowledge that they are learning to real-life activities. This could be a big benefit to incorporating drone education into school curricula as well.

When I was looking at the Drobot website, I saw that one of the main things that they promoted on their website was how they were certified and licensed by an organization called STEM.org. I visited the STEM.org website to learn more about what it was, and I found that it is the longest continually-operating and privately-held STEM education research and credentialing organization in the United States. People can send information about products, programs, people, or published work to get STEM.org Authenticated^TM, STEM.org Accredited^TM, STEM.org Certified^TM, or STEM.org Reviewed^TM, respectively. This organization has standards that must be met in order for a STEM curriculum or program to be designated as STEM.org Accredited^TM.

Because of how widely recognized this organization is, getting a program accredited by STEM.org can add to the credibility of a STEM program or curriculum. I think that using the standards of this organization as criteria to strive to meet when designing a drone curriculum for K-12 students could be helpful to guide the lesson plan design. Going all the way to get the curriculum STEM.org Accredited^TM would be great to achieve, but even if the designer of a drone curriculum was not intending to get accredited by STEM.org, using the STEM.org standards as criteria to guide the curriculum design is still something worth striving for.

GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK

This coming week, I look forward to meeting with my mentor and sharing the information that I researched. I also plan to meet with Mr. Mario Magaña for an informational interview either this week or next week.

As I was looking at the guides for creating a curriculum, there was a really big focus on achieving specific learning outcomes as a part of the Oregon learning standards. However, when looking at these with the goal of creating a drone curriculum, these were some thoughts I had that I would like to ask my mentor about:

• How can hands-on activities and experiential learning be prioritized without placing too much emphasis on learning outcomes? I think that focusing more on the experiences rather than the learning outcomes could make the drone curriculum more enjoyable and possibly more beneficial to students, but it could be hard to allow this to happen when specific standards must be met.
• I read about the importance of promoting creativity in students during some of the research that I did during Week 1 about STEM vs. STEAM. Promoting creativity in students can be a big and important part of including a drone curriculum in their education, but I wonder what kinds of methods exist to evaluate creativity in students.

This week, I did some research on play in education, informal education, and experiential education. I met with my mentor Victor Villegas and created a LinkedIn profile, as well as met with Education Director Cyra Sadowl from Airway Science for Kids for an informational interview.

Researching play in education, informal education, and experiential education

These were the sources that I looked at for each of the topics that I researched this week:

• Play in education – “Participant engagement with play research–examples and lessons learned from the Centre for Play in Education, Development and Learning” by Lenka Janik Blaskova, Soizic Le Courtois, Sara Baker, Jenny Gibson, Paul Ramchandani, Christine O’Farrelly, and Elian Fink
• Informal education – “The Base of the Iceberg: Informal Learning and Its Impacts on Formal and Non-Formal Learning” by Alan Rogers (pp. 33-44 and 68-72)
• Experiential education – “The Learning Way: Meta-cognitive Aspects of Experiential Learning” by Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb

I learned that play in education is very valuable, as it engages children and allows them to develop social skills, sense of self-efficacy, social skills, and creative thinking, which are usually overlooked in typical school readiness measures.

I also read about the value of informal education, which is learning that students engage in where they acquire new knowledge and skills unconsciously. This is achieved through situated learning (being put in situations where students rely on using past knowledge and experiences to deal with new and unfamiliar situations), task-oriented learning (learning how to master a new task), social learning (learning by interacting with others), and individualized learning (learning by reflecting on oneself). The value of informal education should be given more recognition, as the knowledge and skills learned via informal learning are highly applicable and usable in situations both inside and outside the classroom.

I also looked at experiential learning, which is a four-step cycle where students participate in experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting all within a single activity. Experiential learning can improve meta-cognition in students, which has been shown to increase the probability of students succeeding in their tasks. Experiential learning has many benefits compared to traditional learning, especially in that it promotes more of a growth mindset in students rather than a fixed one.

Setting up a linkedin profile

This week was also my first time setting up a LinkedIn profile. I learned about how to add different profile sections to highlight different things about me, such as skills, projects, honors & awards, and education background.

I also practiced requesting a connection and writing a message. I learned that including a note when requesting to connect with someone can be valuable to let them know who you are and why you want to connect with them. I sent a connection request to Cyra Sadowl, the Education Director of Airway Space for Kids, to set up an informational interview with her later in the week.

meeting with cyra sadowl, educational director of airway space for kids

I met with Cyra Sadowl for an informational interview to learn more about what she does at her job as the Education Director at Airway Space for Kids. She works with the Airway Space for Kids organization, which aims to bring aerospace and aviation programs to kids in underserved communities. They focus on outreaching to students who are traditionally underrepresented in STEAM programs in an effort to reduce the systemic barriers that make it harder for them to pursue education in aerospace and aviation. These programs are available to kids in elementary, middle, and high schools, and all of the programs are provided for free to promote accessibility and equity.

One of the highlights from the interview was hearing about what Cyra does in her job day-to-day. Some of the tasks that she does include designing curriculums, learning kits, and modules to allow kids to be able to explore aerospace and aviation. She also connects with many different groups in the community including families, family organizations, local industries, and schools to be able to collaborate with them and share Airway Space for Kid‘s resources. She said that she also teaches classes from time to time.

I also asked Cyra about how the programs help promote creativity in kids. She talked about how artists are invited to paint murals inside the building to create a vivid and engaging environment for the students. She described how it also makes the building come to life a lot more, become a place that is welcoming to everyone in the community, and emphasize placing art at the forefront of STEM. In regards to working with students, she talked about the importance of framing questions as open-ended to spark curiosity and wonder in students, and she also said that she tries to incorporate the engineering design process in the activities that the students do. She stressed the importance of being flexible and being willing to deviate from plans to let students be able to play or further explore things that they are curious about in order to promote creative thinking and exploration.

I also asked Cyra about if the skills that students learn in the program help them to do better with school. She told me about how their programs prioritize developing soft skills and professional skills, such as patience, respect for others, and being able to work with others, which are transferable life skills. Although their program is focused on aviation and aerospace, they do not make students focus on memorizing facts or information. She also talked about how students who have gone through the program have been able to accomplish great things and make it into aviation and aerospace universities. This is a result of how the program was able to help these students overcome barriers that would have prevented them from pursuing education and careers in aviation and aerospace.

I thought that what Cyra does at her job is amazing to be able to improve access to STEAM education to students in the community. I gained a lot of insight about her organization and her work, as well as how the organization is able to promote STEAM and creativity through their programs. I was very grateful for the opportunity to meet her.

This was also my first time doing a professional networking interview, and I learned a lot about what a networking and informational interview is like. It made me realize how important speaking and interviewing skills are.

goals for next week

I plan to meet with my mentor again next week to discuss what I worked on this week and to see what I can continue working on during the upcoming week. I also plan to ask about the Soundbox 5 Festival at OSU (hosted by the College of Liberal Arts), which I plan to attend.