This Title is not the first time I have been asked to give advice on what drone someone should purchase. The last time I was asked this, I was told we have 48 hours to spend this grant, and what drone should we buy? UMMMM……
At the time I did not have any experience with drones and did not considered them as an aspect I would be engaging with in the classroom. There I was madly reading through reviews and comparing products and being asked or my expert opinion. We picked one, it looked pretty and started up, but it would be another year or so before we got training to even think about flying it.
So Work last week asks, we have till the end of the week to spend this grant, what drone should we buy? This time I had some experience, and I wanted to share what that looked like!
I started by asking a few questions:
- How much do you want to spend?
- How many drones do you want to buy?
- Does anyone else in the organization have a UAV license ?
- What do you want to use the drone for?
I used these questions to help guide my recommendations. I made suggestions on the following drones based on user experience, warranty, and capacity. The prior experience of uses would direct what drones provide the most expectation based based experience. A warranty helps for large tech purchases in case something goes wrong or is faulty and that allows the product to not become a wasted investment that never gets used. Warranties have helped in the past such as when we started up a new very expensive desktop for video processing and 3D rendering and the USB device we used short circuited a key component on the motherboard, we sent it off and got a new one back a week later. The third consideration was its capacity, how big is it, how far can it fly, how long can it fly for, what is the image quality of the camera, essentially what is the best option for what it will be used for, without it inhibiting a potential lesson.
What we settled on was a couple of common commercial hobby drones, the options I presented are listed below. I chose to go with the DJI, partly because I have experience flying them but they also come recommended by another drone pilot who trained me. These drones had a reliable battery life and a good amount of fly time. A lot of the recommendations on educational sites looked a classroom pack drones, that were small with short battery and no camera options, the price worked better for classroom budget but I do not believe these would last. I wanted this drone to have a camera so students could share their stories with it. Additionally DJI provides a series of warranty options, the will help cover issues with with the device. I offered my organization 4 options by DJI, they did not let me know how much they wanted to spend, it needed to be approved by the granting agency first. So I showed a few options at different prices. The prices reflect the Fly More purchase option were available, propellers and extra batteries and chargers a typically added.
| Name | Price *USD | Features | size | license required to operate |
| DJI Mavic 3 Pro | $2799 | 43 min flight time 3 cameras built in including zoom and wide angle up to 48mp | 958g | requires a license to operate |
| DJI Air 3 | $1269 | 46 min flight time two cameras built in, at 48mp | 720g | requires a license to operate |
| DJI Avanta Explorer Combo | $899 on sale from $1278 | 18 min flight time 1 camera built in at 48mp blades are contained(safety) comes with fun headset, but might b limiting for some to use, can be flown with controller | 410g | requires a license to operate |
| DJI Mini 4 Pro | $1029 | 34-45 min flight time with flight optimization, 1 camera built in at 48mp | 249g | Does not require a licence to operate, due to being 1 gram below the legal limit for a license |
I suggested these 4 but I also made a recommendation for getting a set of Tellos, these are small drones with a little camera that were made for inside classroom use. They can be programmed by the operator to help teach computational thinking, and can also be connected to other Tellos to perform swarm displays. On a project based application for a video essay for such, these do not perform the way I would like to see, but for a coding and programming connection to learning these, would work really well. They are priced right to be able to make them a classroom kit with more than one unit.
| Product Name | Price/unit | Features | Size | License requirements |
| Tello | $149 | 13 min flight time 5mp camera auto take off and landing programmable with scratch swarm capability max flight distance 100m (no lost fly aways) | 80g | no license required |
At the end of the day or more so around noon, I submitted these suggestions to my colleagues and let them review the process. I have not heard with drone will be picked. The Funding agency has responded with approval to purchase a drone so at least one of them will be coming. The drones will be added to our technology library loan program, so that students and teachers can borrow them for use in the classroom. Additionally, as a certified drone pilot, I will be able to take them with us when we go into community to run programming. Now it will be important to begin developing programming to go with these drones.
In another post, I will outline how I have used a drone in the past for a learning experience in my classroom. (Link to follow)