Starting next year, programming classes at elementary schools will become compulsory. In Chiba City, which is a national strategic zone for drones and where the our company headquarters is located, teachers from elementary schools in the city held a total of 3 meetings from February 5 to 12th to verify whether it is possible to introduce drones into elementary school programming classes. A total of 8 programmable toy drones “Tello EDU” and Windows laptop computers were installed. I think this kind of effort by the city, boards of education, school teachers and private companies is very rare in Japan.
(Video from Chiba Mayor’s Regular Press Conference on January 7, 2020)
Our company generally does infrastructure testing with drones, operates drone fields, and custom drones. The company proposed holding a free type of programming class using drones for the “Drone Utilization Promotion Project” which was recruited by Chiba City last summer, and was selected. In applying for and adopting this award, Mr. Toide, our company’s CEO, was concerned about the delay in STEM education in Asia in general compared to other countries. Based on the idea that “As a leader in the field of drones, I wonder if our company can help the children who will lead the future.” the company started a programming business using drones in 2018, and the project was selected in recognition of its achievements and enthusiasm to date.
In this course, we mainly introduced our company’s unique teaching methods and safety management methods to children, and after that, we used a visual programming software called Scratch to actually experience the flying of educational toy drones called Tello EDU based on an example, and verified whether it was possible for teachers and staff to actually conduct programming classes using drones in schools. They also experienced the operation of the emergency stop command (Command to drop the aircraft immediately in an emergency), which was prepared as a safety measure, and I think it helped them create an image of how to incorporate it into actual classes.
Many teachers who participated in the workshop gave favorable comments such as “enjoyable for adults” “It’s novel to be able to move a three-dimensional robot in front of you.” “It is a good opportunity to be exposed to new industries from childhood.” and “When will it be included in the class?”. After closely examining the results of the verification, the City of Chiba, the Board of Education, and our company will make every effort to establish milestones for future activities.
If you are interested in introducing drone programming classes to schools that have already been packaged by our company, please feel free to contact us at anytime.
At the end of this article, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the people of the National Strategic Special Zone of Chiba City, the members of the Board of Education, the teachers and staff of the elementary and junior high schools in the city who attended the workshop, and the our company staff who worked overtime and even on holidays to provide guidance on the day of the workshop. Thank you very much.