Bringing Drones to Schools for Interdisciplinary STEM+Arts Teaching - Dr. Tim Slater, UW College of Education. Zoom link: https://uwyo.zoom.us/j/97853938567 Abstract: Educators are often looking for innovative ways to better teach interdisciplinary STEM and creative arts—or STEAM—concepts. Recent advances in remote control and autonomous quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV Drones) are bringing excitement of drones within reach of many classrooms previously unable to include such technology. Today’s off-the-shelf drones are far cheaper and often much more easy to fly than previous generations which make for an exciting opportunity to capture students'’ interest. We will describe a rapidly maturing series of regional drone STEAM challenge festivals and competitions that provide students the opportunity to race drones against one another around obstacle courses, complete precision flying tasks, create computer codes for autonomous flight to accomplish challenging flight missions, and demonstrate knowledge of the physics of flying, airport operations and legal issues surrounding flying drones. [www.drone-challenges.org]

Bio: Dr. Tim Slater is the University of Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Professor of Science Education and a professor in the UW College of Education. Dr. Slater earned his Ph.D. in Geological Sciences for the University of South Carolina, his MS in Physics & Astronomy from Clemson University and two Bachelor's degrees from Kansas State University. The author of more than 100 peer reviewed articles and 26 books, he is widely known as "the professors' professor" because he has taught thousands of junior faculty members in workshops across the world how to improve their students' learning. In the past few years, he has been focusing on improving the intersections among agricultural education, STEM education, and technical vocational education.