When three local educators sat down in 2022 to write a proposal for a Moonshot Grant, they gave a lot of thought to the guidelines. Projects funded by Moonshot Grants from Remake Learning are bold, ambitious ideas that help usher in the future of learning.
The funding – up to $70,000 for creative projects that emphasize collaboration between members of the Pittsburgh region’s learning ecosystem – isn’t intended to support ideas that have already been proven to work. It’s about making leaps that are thoughtfully designed, but so big and untested that they might just fall short of their lofty goals.
Even if they do, the hope is that these projects yield a new understanding of what’s possible in the world of teaching and learning. If you shoot for the moon and don’t quite make it, the saying goes, you’ll still end up among the stars.
The groundbreaking Moonshot idea proposed by these educators – Dr. Janeen Peretin, director of communication, innovation and advancement at Baldwin-Whitehall, Emily Sanders, assistant superintendent at Beaver Area and Dr. Kristin Deichler, assistant superintendent at South Fayette – certainly fit the bill.
REACHING FOR THE SKY
The Fly Like a Girl (FLAG) Drone Academy, launched last summer, brought together a group of 20 girls from Baldwin-Whitehall, Beaver Area, South Fayette, Ambridge and McKeesport, offering them hands-on aviation training and theoretical learning about aerospace technology and drone operation.
By the end of the program, these students would have the chance to sit for the Federal Aviation Administration’s drone pilot licensing exam. Ideally, one or more of the teenagers in the inaugural FLAG cohort might actually become licensed pilots of unmanned aircraft.
To the folks at Remake Learning, the project was clearly in sync with the goals of the Moonshot program. It offered targeted STEM learning for girls, giving them hands-on skills in a burgeoning industry and a deep understanding of the science of flight. It also gave educators from three districts a chance to work closely together and would help the students make personal connections beyond their own schools.
But could teenagers actually become professional drone pilots?
LAUNCHING TOWARD THEIR DREAMS
When students Gourisree Prasanth from South Fayette and Molly Fircak from Baldwin-Whitehall joined the FLAG program, they had little knowledge of how drones work or how they might figure into a future career.
“I’ve always kind of been interested in that sort of technology and trying new things,” Prasanth says. “But I definitely didn’t think drones would be a part of my high school life.”
Within weeks, though, both girls were fascinated. And after months of hard work – learning about everything from drone design to the impact of temperature, wind speed and fog on flying – their skills grew.
Prasanth began an internship with Dr. Lori Paluti at Pittsburgh Drone Services, while Fircak started hearing from local real estate agents and construction companies about the possibility of getting hired to do freelance drone photography – if she could one day earn a license.
For both students, the sky is turning out to literally and figuratively be the limit. Recently, both girls took the FAA exam and passed, earning their federal licenses to work as professional drone pilots.
Looking back, both students say they wouldn’t have imagined accomplishing this when they began the program last year.
“I definitely didn’t think that this is where my career path would go, even just a year or two ago,” Fircak says. She’s now approaching her senior year of high school with a plan to seek work as a drone pilot for one of the local TV news stations, which are beginning to replace news helicopters with drones.
Prasanth is about to begin her freshman year at Penn State, where she’ll study aerospace engineering. She’s also planning to earn money toward her tuition by working as a freelance drone photographer and videographer in the State College area.
“There’s a lot of private events that you can do drone coverage of,” she explains. Though she’s most fascinated by engineering and drone design, Prasanth also enjoys “the artistic side, where you get your own shots and things like that.”
For Peretin and her co-founders of the FLAG program, it’s been a fantastic experience to see how much their students have accomplished.
Recently, Peretin and Deichler spoke about FLAG at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in Denver. They shared the good news about their students earning their licenses. And in the spirit of the Moonshot Grants, they also shared a detailed framework that other educators can follow with their own students.
Could this Moonshot project spark a wave of FLAG groups nationwide?
“Our presentation was met with enthusiastic reception,” Peretin says. “We proudly shared the girls’ voices and experiences, highlighting their achievements and inspiring others to pursue similar paths for their students.”
Authored by
Melissa Rayworth
Melissa Rayworth has spent two decades writing about the building blocks of modern life — how we design our homes, raise our children and care for elderly family members, how we interact with pop culture in our marketing-saturated society, and how our culture tackles (and avoids) issues of social justice and the environment.