For our last meeting of the year, the girls learned how to create a promotional video for their tabletop town in Canva. They combined their town drone footage with music, voiceover, and other fun elements. They only had 40 minutes to create their short videos and did a great job for not having much experience in video creation or editing! We then had fun viewing party!

Visit the "Town Videos" link above to check them out!

The challenge for the girls this week was to engineer a table top town. The girls had lots of materials to choose from including LEGOs, cardboard, plastic animals, LEGO people, plastic fencing, KEVA planks, construction paper, and tape. They then learned how to capture video with their TELLO Drones and took turns flying around the town getting footage from all angles. Their yawing skills came in handy!

Race time! This week the GLIDE girls brought their obstacles to the gym and set them up as a course. Each girl had an opportunity to pilot her drone through the course while being timed. The yawing and rolling skills were amazing as many of these obstacles were quite challenging!

During this week's meeting the GLIDE girls were introduced to Drone Racing! After watching THIS video about a professional drone racer and looking at the obstacles the drones have to maneuver through, each team had to design, build, and test a challenging drone obstacle of their own! Their optional materials included hula hoops, pool noodles, cardboard, PVC pipes and fittings, rope, zip ties, and tape. During our next meeting we will take their obstacles to the gym and have our very own drone race! Stay tuned...it's gonna be exciting!

Today the GLIDE girls learned how firefighters (right here in NC!) are using drones for search and rescue and to send crucial information back to their crews to improve efficiency and safety! After watching THIS video, the teams were tasked with engineering a house following specific constraints and guidelines (see pictures below). After labeling each of their windows they had to put a fire and a person in two of their rooms. They spent the rest of club time piloting their Tellos around each of the other teams' houses trying to determine where the fires were, as well as where the people needed rescuing were located. They communicated this information back to the team who collected the data. At the end, we checked the accuracy of the finds. Our pilots were extremely effective and accurate!

During club today the girls read an article and watched a video about power companies and wildlife agencies using drones to protect migrating birds from running into power lines. The drones carry a robot which slides along the powerlines attaching reflective tape, proven to dissuade birds from flying into the lines. The teams had to engineer a "bird protector" using pipe cleaners, beads, tape, straws, and other materials.  Then using the Parrot Mambo Drones and their "grabber" attachment, they had to safely deposit as many protectors as they could on their team's powerline (string tied between towers). There was a great deal of engineering as weight, wind shear, and design all were very important!

Have you noticed how popular drone shows have become? Today the girls watched a video of a nighttime drone show and planned out a program to create their own. It was their first attempt at coding the Tello Drones rather than free flying! Each team's drone had a colorful, blinking infrared light attached to it. HERE are the slides we used.

We learned an important lesson that when using Drone Blocks, the drones need to "see" the floor in order to carry out the program. Since we had the lights off, we experienced some frustration, but remedied the problem by just going back to free flying to end the challenge. The show was fascinating!

Today the girls learned all about the WWII military pilot, Gale Halvorsen, better known as the "Candy Bomber". During the war, Halvorsen dropped tons of candy to the children of Berlin to comfort them. This mission was re-enacted by our GLIDE girls using the Drone Legends cup attachment snapped onto the tops of their drones. They had to take turns piloting candy, which was then "flipped" into the team's hula hoop landing zone. It was a close competition with more than 25 pieces being delivered by the winning team!

Yay! We're back! Today the girls used Canva to create "All About Me Slides" (See "Meet the Members tab). They also created their unique ideas for this year's t-shirt design. We reviewed drone use, safety, and job roles while flying. The girls then broke into teams and had to work their way through THIS FLIGHT PLAN LIST. 

We are so excited that all the girls earned their Legendary Drone Pilot's Wings!

Build a zoo, capture footage of the various exhibits with your drone, and create an amazing zoo tour promotional video! That was the challenge for the GLIDE girls. Today they worked on building the zoo and capturing lots of footage with their drones.

Today the GLIDE girls practiced their skills with flipping Dragon Eggs in a friendly competition! They also took some time to learn how to use Canva to create a club t-shirt design. The design with the most votes will be made into our 2022 t-shirts, while all the other designs will be made into colorful posters to display in our STEM Lab!

Mr. Paul von Hardenberg, a CTE teacher at Union Pines HS, and his student Kaden McVerry, a certified drone pilot and drone business owner, were guests speakers at GLIDE today! The girls learned about becoming certified pilots and operating larger drones used in many occupations in our society. They learned about the up and coming sport of Drone Soccer and got to fly tiny drones called Holy Stone Drones. We all then went outside while Kaden piloted a demonstration and flyover of our group and the Sandhills Farm Life School! It was an amazing day!