Sample IT Activities (Secondary Schools)

Drone Coding for Aerial Missions

Objective:
To enable students to learn computational thinking through drone coding. They will learn to program their drones to perform various missions and learn to debug and improve their programs.

Description:
The school will organise a series of basic drone control and coding workshops to students. The workshops include theoretical session conducted in a classroom, including coding, application and constraints of the drone and practical session conducted in school hall or playground for testing their codes in controlling the drone to take various routes. The school will also organise an intra-school competition or challenge for students to program routes with obstacles in the shortest time.

Moderate level session may include using codes to perform drone photography, route design for racing, precision landing, etc.

Hardware	Programmable drones PC / laptop / tablet computer with Internet connection
Software	Drone SDK / APIs Common programming languages like Scratch / Javascript / C# / Python / Java / C++ / Swift
Major Activities	Theoretical session covering: Coding and SDK Application Drone flight operation principles and constraints Other topics must include ethics, privacy, safety and related regulations, etc. (Some useful reference: https://www.cad.gov.hk/english/unmanned_aircraft_systems.html www.pcpd.org.hk/english/resources_centre/publications/files/GN_CCTV_Drones_e.pdf) Practical session of drone coding, testing, debugging and pilot competing Share the challenges and lesson learnt
Learning Objective(s)	Enhance students' computational thinking skills, through design coding to control drones thus appreciating how algorithms work with physical systems, including important data like shapes, perimeters, turns and angles of rotation, as well as coordinates Enhance students' ability to apply the IT knowledge and skills learnt Enhance students' non-technical skills including creativity and innovation, and collaboration skills
Duration	Basic session Theoretical session: 6 hours Practical session: 8 hours Moderate level session : depending on the complexity
Difficulty	Medium
Target Level	Basic session : S1 - S2 Moderate level session : S3 - S4
Target No. of Students	About 20 students per workshop