Drones in School is a unique educational program that develops aeronautics, engineering, project management, entrepreneurship, graphic design, and marketing skills. Drones in School is a comprehensive event that challenges students to go beyond their current skills through a fun and engaging process that wraps around the exciting sport of drone racing.
Drones in School teams consists of two to seven students that fill six job roles. While the team works collaboratively throughout the season, each role is responsible for specific deliverables relevant to the competition.
Drones in School teams compete in six categories. These categories provide learning opportunities for a variety of student interests. Student teams can demonstrate mastery of various learning competencies through these competition areas.
Drones in School teams design and build/improve two racing drones, create a team display, portfolio, and marketing video. Teams earn points based on their race performance and how the judges score their display booth, engineering and technical skills, marketing video, and portfolio. These scores combine to award the overall race event champion. This structure provides an opportunity for any student to be involved in this program and find success.
Students learn project management fundamentals and use best practices to self regulate their team. Over the course of the season, students will develop valuable project management skills that are transferable to any career field.
The annual Drones in School Season Guide is released in August, and face-to-face race events begin in October. In addition to locally hosted face-to-face race events, teams can participate in monthly virtual races where they can record head-to-head race results and submit the marketing video, portfolio, and display through an online portal. The event judging team analyzes each of these items based on a rubric in the annual season guide. Virtual races allow any school to set up a track and participate in global events.
During a face-to-face event, teams will participate in two types of races, a head-to-head race, and a capture the flag race, in addition to video, portfolio, and display judging.
By participating in face-to-face or virtual events, teams earn points throughout the season in hopes of earning an invitation to the Championship Race at the end of the season (late April / May).
Drones In School is a MultiGP STEM Alliance partner and a program of the 501c3 non-profit, EduEverything, Inc. EduEverything is committed to promoting the idea that students in our schools must still have the skills necessary to make real and tangible objects. We do this through professional development opportunities for educators, online curriculum, and competitive events for students.