2021 Tello Drone Programming Workshop: Inspiring Students to Explore the World of STEM

In sharing our education stories, we often revisit past school cases to demonstrate how Tello drone programming workshops bring transformation to students. This time, let's look back at the workshop held at North Point Methodist Primary School in 2021. Our goal was not only to help students master drone programming, but also to cultivate their endurance and perseverance through an internal swarm flight performance. Despite encountering hardware, software and system issues, the students' growth was truly touching.

Workshop Design: Focus on Practice and Team Challenges

This Tello drone programming workshop totalled 9 hours across 6 sessions, with a class size limited to 12 students, targeting Primary 4 and above, delivered in Cantonese. The course was led by two senior instructors, Alex and Elvis.

The workshop set an internal swarm flight performance as the ultimate goal, allowing students to build skills progressively from basics. Key highlights include:

• Drone Technology and STEM Introduction (L1) — Students explored basic drone principles and STEM applications such as rescue and environmental monitoring.
• Safety Rules and Hong Kong CAD Regulations (L1) — Detailed explanation of operating standards and regulations, fostering responsible attitudes.
• Manual Operation of Tello EDU (L1-L2) — Students operated Tello EDU hands-on, learning take-off, hovering and turning basics.
• Computer Science Basics – Introduction to Programming — Programming thinking introduced to pave the way for subsequent lessons.
• Tello Programming with Scratch Interface – Flow Control Basics (L3-4) — Using Scratch graphical tools, students wrote programmes to control drones, learning loops and conditional logic.
• Networking Concepts: IP Addresses, Ports, UDP, TCP — Deep dive into networking fundamentals for drone communication.
• Tello Swarm Programming with Tello EDU App (L5-6) — Students used the app to coordinate multiple drones for team missions.
• Swarmathon Competition and Internal Swarm Performance (L5-6) — The final Swarmathon competition was presented as an internal performance, with student groups designing tasks for drone swarms to complete.

Student Transformation: Learning Perseverance Through Challenges

Under Alex and Elvis's guidance, students not only acquired technical skills but also developed resilience in facing problems. This experience transformed them from passive learners to active explorers, igniting sparks of innovation. Co-INSPIRE's philosophy is precisely to help students build confidence and problem-solving capabilities through hands-on challenges.