Faith Zako

The Los Banos High School offers a small range of college courses on campus after school.

Just this semester, a new addition was welcomed. Drone Technology 1 is being offered by the Merced College as part of their drone technology certificate pathway.

Drone Technology 1 was started by Professor Kanemoto, a college professor, “in an effort to create computational science pathways from the high school to college.”  Mike Bonillas, our school’s security guard is teaching the course on campus.

According to Professor Kanemoto, “Mike Bonillas has been invaluable in helping to create these pathways and starting this drone technology class.”

The class is offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays, starting at sixth period, 2 p.m., and ending after school at 4:15 p.m in room 527. The students will learn many aspects of drone technology, including flying drones, programming drones, soldering payloads with Arduinos, and gathering and interpreting data. Students will even be able to build drones!

The class practices using the technology by flying their drones around a small set up obstacle course consisting of orange traffic cones.  The students tried to navigate the drones around the cones while getting as close as possible. The students had fun doing small tricks with their drones, like having it hover above their hand or doing small flips.

One student agreed that the drones sound like “a swarm of bees from a cartoon.”

The class is small, consisting mostly of boys with only one female student present. More students would be welcome to join if the time to do so is still open.

While at times it looks like fun and games, the Drone Technology 1 professors hope that some brilliant computer scientists will come out of it.

If you have any interest in drones or computer technology, this might be the class for you. Check it out!