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CHARLES CITY, Iowa (AP) — More than a dozen students at Charles City High School are being taught how drones can be used as tools for farming.
The students are learning to fly a quadcopter drone equipped with a still camera and a video camera in their agriculture classes. They also are able to practice on school grounds during an expanded lunch hour in which they can participate in enrichment activities.
Students were taught what each button on the drone's controller does before they learned how to launch and land the drone.
"It's easy to control and you can do a lot of great things with it," said freshman Caleb Beetz.
Drones initially were considered toys, but now they're also agricultural tools, freshman Carter West told the Globe Gazette (http://bit.ly/1FxALuX ).
"Technology in agriculture is evolving every day," junior Maddison Loeckley said.
Drones allow farmers to get a bird's eye view of their fields and see what's happening, she said. Farmers can use drones to determine if there is standing water and moisture in the field, West added.
But the Federal Aviation Administration enforces many restrictions on drones, said Jim Lundbery, agriculture education teacher at the high school. Hobby and recreational drones can go as high as 400 feet and cannot be flown over a crowd of people, he said.
The students only fly the drones about 20 feet above the ground.
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Information from: Globe Gazette, http://www.globegazette.com/
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