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Drone school: Breitung a flagship program for robotics education, competition

Owen Lebouef and Amanda Gibbons, STEM/Robotics 21st-century learning coordinator, look over one of the 60 new drones Breitung Township Schools received through a Robotics Education and Competition (REC) Foundation Aerial Drones (RAD) program grant as Emma Marotz looks on. (Theresa Proudfit/Daily News photos)

KINGSFORD — The drones are coming to Breitung Township Schools.

The district recently received a grant through the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation’s Aerial Drones program to acquire 60 Parrot Mambo drones that come with different attachments such as cameras, shooters, grabbers and controllers

“It’s a brand-new program, it has not been around before so we are going to end up being one of the flagship programs in the United States,” said Amanda Gibbons, STEM/Robotics 21st-century learning coordinator.

The grant also allows them to add more drones to their library next year. “We received $30,000 overall, plus some additional funding to possibly fund some after school and summer camp-type activities with them,” Gibbons said.

The drones will be used in the ninth- and sixth-grade classrooms.

Amanda Gibbons, STEM/Robotics 21st-century learning coordinator, watches as Owen Lebouef flies one of Breitung Township Schools’ new aerial drones as Emma Marotz waits her turn to fly.

“We wanted to figure out how to make it accessible for every kid. There is so much cool learning that comes with drones, such as the physics and the radio waves, so it is well-suited to our ninth-grade science program,” Gibbons said.

“Not only is it a fun thing to do, but there are a lot of different things they can do so they are learning.”

Once the school learned they were eligible for the grant, Gibbons filled out the required paperwork and realized there was a requirement that the students would fly in a competition.

With no accessible competitions nearby, the school district decided to put out the money to buy the competition field or course and all the equipment to host its own event.

“So next month, we have people flying in to train us how to do it so we can meet the requirements of the grant,” Gibbons said.

Breitung Township Schools will host “Drone Day” on Feb. 12.

“We are going to pull the students out of their science class for the day and they are going to go to the big blue gym and drive this huge drone through obstacle courses — big hoops, landing challenges where they can land in certain places for points.”

Gibbons hopes more local schools will jump into drone activities.

“Once we found out we could host and could meet the requirements of the grant, we reached out and called Iron Mountain and we wrote a grant for them and they got 10 drones. West Iron and Gladstone also took drones, so now they can reach out to us to meet their requirements,” she said.

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