Designing Drone-Based Solutions for Climate Education in Secondary Schools

This pilot initiative explores the design and integration of drone technology in a 9th-grade Earth and Space Science curriculum to enhance student engagement in climate science. In this three-week Drone Climate Project, students built drones using low-cost kits, learned programming via Arduino IDE software, and utilized Tinkercad for the 3D design and printing of drone attachments in small groups. The project encouraged hands-on learning and problem-solving as youth connected STEM principles with real-world climate issues. Facilitated by self-paced instructional materials and collaborative-design processes, students developed meaningful solutions to combat relevant environmental challenges. Overall, this work serves as a model for integrating drones into diverse educational settings and demonstrates the potential of drones as instructional tools in promoting climate education. Thus, we invite other educators to adapt and implement drone-based curricula in their own educational contexts.