STEM Minute| Teaching kids about new technology while giving them a birds eye view

BEMENT, Ill. (WAND)-- Giving students a chance to learn while seeing what is like to have eyes in the sky. A class at Bement Middle School is exposing students to new technology, through their unique course that is designed to provide students with a STEM education while also teaching them important life skills.

STEM Instructor, Hope Walker, says, "I'm hoping that they get some more ideas of what STEM can do for them in the future. Especially with the drones, there's a lot of opportunity in careers."

Walker hopes that by providing students with hands on experiences they will start to better connect to the material that they are learning. During their unit on drones, students have been working on their essential math skills.

"For drones, the kids have been measuring out angles, which is a math skill for middle school students, and you never hear them complain when it's with something fun that they're getting to learn hands on."

Students are also learning valuable coding skills. At the start of the unit students worked with their instructors to build their drones and learn how to fly them, but now students have advance to be able to program their drones to fly in patterns and even change colors.

"We started with basic down and back to get familiar with programming the code and then they programmed a rectangle to get the idea of a 90-degree angle, then we went to triangle patterns where they had to program angles that were not 90-degrees as well as changing the color of the drones."

The goal of this class is to give every student access to a STEM education while making the concepts fun. The skills that they are learning are preparing the students for the future.

Student, Gavin Somers, says, "The drones were really fun and just the activities that we do, and the projects are really useful for life experiences."

This is the second year that this course has been offered at Bement Middle School. While the instructors are making sure that students are learning about all things STEM, they are also educating them about future career opportunities that could come along with flying a drone.