STEM at Pequea Valley Intermediate School

In the 8th Grade STEM Advanced class, learners were engaged in learning how to read, create, and manipulate code. Using the Apple Swift Playground “Parrot Education,” learners were able to create code that applied their understanding of commands, proper sequence, various functions, and more, into a program that controlled the drone to complete a task.
One such task was the challenge that mimicked an agricultural setting where the drone had to takeoff from the barn, and then move over four different fields, which represented them being sprayed, and then return back to the barn. A second challenge was a military example. Here, learners had to design a program that had the drone takeoff from the military base and fly over an enemy nuclear weapons facility to obtain an image of the facility. Then, to avoid radar detection, evasive maneuvers had to implemented, and finally return back to base safely.
Although there was some frustration with connection issue between learners’ drone, and the class may have seemed a little chaotic at times, the learners showed good development through the coding process, and were able to demonstrate perseverance through struggles, along with other developments.