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Fall weather is finally upon us, DRONE on and on and on…

Usually in autumn when the leaves change colors and the temperature gets colder, I get a sense of melancholy.  Fall break is over, classes are back in the groove and “Winter is Coming”.  Today, the leaves are falling and the trees are becoming bare-- gray sky and gray day.  Hold on!  Something just cheered me up!  The USF-TV Club just received its video drone a few minutes ago.  It was very exciting to unpack and inventory all of the items that came with the drone.  We can’t wait to fly it!

Last spring, we had a consultant speak to students about commercial opportunities that are available for drone owners who are licensed.  In the quad, he demonstrated how to fly a drone.  Soon after, we hired Great Lakes Media, a local video production company, to use a drone to shoot footage of the University’s campuses.  In this way, we could update our intro for our weekly cablecast program Exploring Joliet.   

Alas, this fall semester, we received the necessary funds to finally purchase a drone with the help of the Student Government Association and the Communication & Media Arts department.

 Soon, I will be teaching my students how to fly the drone safety.  Not to worry, the University has more than one-million dollars’ worth of insurance to cover damages relating to drone flying…knock-on- wood.

Of course, flying the drone will be an exciting learning experience for students and it should be fun.  However, the real learning outcome will be to acquire quality footage to enhance digital content in our projects. 

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