Curious about the effectiveness of DroneBlocks? We now have some data to back up the success of Drones in the classroom. That’s right – the numbers are in!

DroneBlocks created a survey and asked its users to participate in providing valuable feedback in order for the development team to get a pulse on how it’s going out there in the field. The survey has helped DroneBlocks’ team identify and focus on points of success, support, development, improvement, and user demographics. All of this data was useful to the team and future operations- but the most pleasant surprise was some of the extraneous sharing of ideas, lesson plans, and feedback that we knew would benefit the rest of the DroneBlocks community- which we’ll be sharing below.

Our participants were a mix of educators, administrators, camp counselors, and casual users across the United States. Some were new to DroneBlocks and some were loyal Enterprise members for over 2 years. But let’s start off with some things they all had in common…which of course the DroneBlocks team was ecstatic to discover. When we asked…

“How has DroneBlocks and drones increased overall student engagement?”

Almost everyone seemed to agree! DroneBlocks either Met or Exceeded 98% of Participants’ expectations.

Another big question DroneBlocks often gets from inquiries is regarding safety – and now you don’t have to take it from us- when asked how they would rate the safety of drones in the classroom, users had a very positive response with 88% of DroneBlocks users saying they were Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the safety of DroneBlocks implementation.

Let’s just say – those two findings were really affirmations of what the DroneBlocks team has believed in for years in their quest to introduce STEM Learning through Drones into the classroom. The next few questions were a real testament to the hard work and development aspect of putting DroneBlocks into action –  as much as we were looking for pats on the back, we were also eager to find areas of improvement. We asked…

“How would you rate the DroneBlocks App Overall?”

98% of Participants answered that they were Satisfied or Very Satisfied…

Alright! Not bad at all! But what about when we asked the same regarding “…the DroneBlocks Curriculum?” 97% of our user pool said they were Satisfied or Very Satisfied!

We’ll take it! If we were a restaurant on Yelp! I think we would be sitting on the good side of 5 Stars. But just like most of you – as good as the numbers are for a quick evaluation, we wanted to read “the comment section.” And that’s where we found some of our most valuable responses that fostered improvements such as the latest Simulator Updates, our Databot Partnership, our Wifi Troubleshooting Blog Post, Manual Keyboard Control, and the many more that are being fine-tuned in the workshop.

Questions like “Describe your favorite project you used the drones for in your classroom?” Offered up some pretty fun and interesting ideas that we wanted to share with the community. Here are our favorite responses to offer you some inspiration!

• We synchronized drones to do a dance for show and tell.

• In a class-wide Drone precision flight competition, we built flight gates out of PVC Pipes.

• We used to strengthen the students’ understanding of geometry and cartesian plane topics.

• We played Drone “H-O-R-S-E” where students had to mimic each other’s flight patterns.

• The drones enhanced our “4 forces of flight” lesson for Grades K-5.

• We had to pick up and move a small weight to a destination, using the Drone.

• Practicing flying and taking selfies.

• Getting kids that are often uninterested in math, excited about the class.

• Tic Tac Toe, and Drone Bowling.

• During PE Class, we had students code the drone through a drone obstacle course as students simultaneously when through a physical obstacle course as a relay race. They loved it.

• We designed a “hook release” for a NASA project.

• We built a model of a city and staged a “car accident” the Drone mission is to fly over the area and display an emergency message.

• We used them to complete gutter inspections for our school building! The students seemed to be engaged in the real-life business application.

• A scenario using drones to deliver medicine. Our students experienced a hurricane and it was a great way to show how drones can be used in a situation they could directly relate to.

DroneBlocks would like to not only thank users for their great suggestions, but for participating in all aspects of the survey in helping to improve DroneBlocks for its thousands of users. One of the most exciting and unexpected joys of building DroneBlocks is the growing community and how every educator, student, and developer at DroneBlocks gets to build together!