South Orangetown Central School District

South Orangetown Middle School seventh-graders in enrichment and technology teacher Andrew McIntosh’s Challenge Lab are hard at work creating drone landing pads and using programming software!

Students are in the initial stages of their latest project – building landing pads constructed from materials including cardboard boxes and popsicle sticks. Using IDE Corps.’s Design Process as a guide, seventh-graders formulate, explore, ideate, sift, simulate and advocate in order to bring their design ideas to fruition.

In addition, students explore Tynker – an iPad application using visual coding blocks to control speed and direction – as they select the lines of code that will program their dones to accurately land on their target.

“The Drone Landing Pad Project cultivates creativity and excitement for hands-on learning,” said McIntosh. “Students develop creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, perseverance and grit while learning about the fundamentals of coding, engineering, physics and math.”

Students work on drone project