Drone technology for primary school students in learning STEM

Abstract

Drone technology is among the emerging technologies in the era of Industrial Revolution 4.0 (4IR). To accelerate the learning of drone technology, it should be introduced to young children at their early age, especially to spark their interest in drone technology as well as in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning. There have been efforts to introduce drone technology to university students and secondary school students. However, effort to introduce drone technology to young children was not widely found. This may due to the difficulty of the technology to be understood by young children and that not all parents, and teachers are competent to operate drones. Drones are also dangerous to be operated in front of young children and they are quite expensive. Hence, a drone competition was designed to allow young children to learn about drone technology without the need for them to buy a drone to start off with. The competition was divided into three stages where the first stage is a webinar to introduce drone technology to the young children. It was conducted online due to the movement control order during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the next stage, the children answered a set of quiz and in the final stage, they submitted a video how they made a drone model using recycling materials. They were interviewed to understand how their STEM knowledge developed through this competition. The quiz data, video presentation, and interview data were collected and analyzed qualitatively. It was found that the experiential learning and project-based learning through this competition has helped the participant in developing their knowledge in drone technology and interest in STEM learning. © 2022 American Institute of Physics Inc.. All rights reserved.