New Unit of Work!

Thanks to a strategic partnership with She Maps in Australia, DroneBlocks is able to offer the “Healthcare in the Himalayas” challenge! Through this activity, students will learn about the challenges facing remote communities living in the Himalayas, the role that technology can play in humanitarian efforts, as well as how to block and line-based code with DroneBlocks!

This activity is designed as a full Unit of Work and is mapped to the Australian Curriculum for Geography, Digital Technologies and Design Technologies for Years 5- 10. Complete with a Lesson Plan, Student Activity Sheets, and an Assessment Rubric – Healthcare in the Himalayas is a real time-saver for busy teachers!

To discover more great teaching resources like this, click here. 

To bring together this activity, She Maps collaborated with some very special partners: WeRobotics, the Nepal Flying Lab, and DroneBlocks!

WeRobotics and the Flying Labs

WeRobotics is an organization that believes strongly in the Power of the Local. Too often, organizations will travel to economically underdeveloped countries in order to ‘fix problems’ without engaging local people, and then leave. WeRobotics takes a very different approach and focuses on capacity building by training local experts. They recognize that local people have greater contextual knowledge and lived experiences to be able to effectively address the challenges facing their own communities, and should be empowered to do so.

WeRobotics co-creates and facilitate an inclusive network of locally-led knowledge hubs across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and beyond – known as the “Flying Labs®” network. Flying Labs strengthen local expertise in the use of drones, robotics, data, and AI for positive social change. They demonstrate The Power of the Local. Flying Labs also expand local markets by creating new jobs and businesses that offer robotics as a service and support local ecosystems.

Initiatives by the Flying Labs span across all fields, including agriculture, healthcare, disaster relief, environmental outcomes, humanitarian outreach, and education.

Meet Uttam from the Nepal Flying Lab

She Maps works closely with the Nepal-based chapter of the WeRobotics Flying Labs, and it’s coordinator, Uttam Pudasaini. Some of you might have watched Uttam’s awesome EduDrone presentation earlier this year, where he shared some of the different projects that the Nepal Flying Labs work on, such as disaster mapping, tracking receding glaciers, and developing a drone delivery network to fight Tuberculosis in remote regions of Nepal.

At SheMaps, we believe that students work better when they’re given real-world applications! So for our Healthcare in the Himalayas activity, Uttam has set students a very important mission – help him design a drone, and then a drone delivery network, to transport medical aid to people living in remote regions of Nepal. Here is Uttam’s Challenge, which is part of the Healthcare in the Himalayas activity (now available in our ORBIT Membership).

*insert vid*

Getting Started with DroneBlocks

Use the DroneBlocks app to block code Tello to fly your Himalayan mission, or challenge students by introducing DroneBlocks Code! DroneBlocks Code is a straightforward interface to allow students to code Tello using JavaScript.

Access Healthcare in the Himalayas Challenge