Drones and the Coordinate Plane

The school year is wrapping up and with just three days left I realized I hadn't used the drones I received for Christmas this year.  In Algebra we are looking forward to their next year, so I rearranged the desks and made a giant coordinate plane on the floor of the classroom.

There was some great build-up since it took me a couple days in advance to lay it all out.  Students from all my classes were wondering what we would do.

I had a bell-ringer about graphing coordinate points.  Then I pulled the drones out and since our students had to turn in their iPads the day before I used my iPhone and iPad as the two driving devices. (It also turned out that is why I have very few pictures.)

Here is the game that I laid out for each team.  

It was a learning curve since I didn't tell them how to fly, but students got the hang of it and it moved pretty quickly.  Here is a picture of one student's drone landing and another's trying to find the spot.

Next year I will have students graph the coordinates who are not flying the drone on a separate sheet of paper and help give directions on which way to fly the drone.  It was a great end of the year activity, will definitely use this in the classroom next year.

New FAA Rules for Educators (with Drones)

With heightened security issues around drones with using them around airports, or more recently following the presidents motorcade on a recent trip. The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) came out about two weeks ago with drones on their mind enforcing new rules about drones and registration. 

1. If you only operate your drone indoors, you are perfectly fine, because the airspace in buildings doesn't fall under FAA guidelines. You can skip the rest.

2. If you do take your drone outdoors and use it for educational purposes you are not labeled a hobbyist or recreationalist. You will need to register your drone with the FAA and pay 5$ to register your drone no matter the weight. When the registration comes in, you will need to carry the registration when you fly it.

To find more information about safely flying your drone follow this link: https://www.faa.gov/uas/model_aircraft/

You can register your drone here: FAA.gov

You can find more information here: https://www.faa.gov/uas/registration/faqs/

No More Rulers! Accessorizing Your Math Classroom

Done are the days of buying manipulatives, flash cards, and binder clips for your worksheets.  Math classrooms are changing for the better.  More schools are going 1-1 with iPads and Chrome Books, that means more technology in the hands of students and more hands on activities. Here we will go over a few supplemental tools you can use with your iPads or Chrome Books to push student thinking and engagement to the next level.

Adidas miCoach Soccer Ball (200$)

The adidas miCoach SMART BALL soccer ball helps you improve your dead-kick technique by providing instant feedback on the power, trajectory, spin, and strike accuracy of your kick. Featuring integrated sensors, the app-enabled miCoach SMART BALL tells you everything you need to know to improve your kick, while maintaining the weight and feel of a regulation size 5 soccer ball.  The miCoach SMART BALL app provides instant feedback on and analysis of your kicking performance. Watch tutorials to help you master new techniques, challenge yourself to apply power with control, attempt to replicate the kicks of professional football players, and save your best kicks each day.

The app provides great curved graphs and would be an excellent resource when graphing parabolas or looking at data.

94fifty Smart Basketball (200$)

The 94fifty basketball is a lot like the miCoach Soccer ball.  The basketball has a sensor that sends data like shot arc, shot release speed, shot backspin, dribble speed, and makes and misses.  Another great way to get students into parabolas and graphing parabolas.  You can also get the data used with scatter plots or probability and statistics.

Parrot Mini Drone (80$-100$)

Parrot Rolling Spider is an ultra-compact drone controlled by smartphone. It flies indoors and outdoors with surprising speed and stability. Acrobatic tricks are available from the free app for MiniDrones  FreeFlight 3. Drones are being used more and more in education and the FAA came out with new rules for drones, blog post to come.  I use the drone indoors to avoid any regulations with the FAA.

Mini drones like these are perfect for the Tickle app and introducing students to coding.  In the math classroom there are ways of explaining geometry, function operation, and trigonometry.

3D Printers (Polar 3D) (600$) 

Yes, this is a little bit more expensive, but wouldn't it be awesome if you could create manipulatives or students make something in math class.  Polar3D is a newer 3D printer that is focused on making them specifically for education.  Students can print trig functions, using scales to scale down buildings or self made maps, or a great activity where students 3D print their own weird dice.

Breakout Edu (100$)

Breakout EDU creates ultra-engaging learning games for people of all ages. Games (Breakouts) teach teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking, and troubleshooting by presenting participants with challenges that ignite their natural drive to problem-solve.

Breakouts are perfect for classrooms, staff trainings, dinner parties, and at home with the family! At the end of a Breakout, your players will be eager for the next! Speciality K-12 Breakouts can be used to teach core academic subjects including math, science, history, language arts and have embedded standards that apply problem solving strategies within a real world OR collaborative context.  

There are great examples that use math in these breakout edu kits, you can find the parts on Amazon or you can look around at different places and find the stuff you are looking for about 20$ cheaper, but you don't get the cool box everything comes in.