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 AuthenticatedTM, STEM.org AccreditedTM, STEM.org CertifiedTM, or STEM.org ReviewedTM, respectively. This organization has standards that must be met in order for a STEM curriculum or program to be designated as STEM.org AccreditedTM.
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 AccreditedTM 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.
