Progress 08/01/24 to 07/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:Our efforts primarily reached teens ages 13-18 in non-formal 4-H settings across three counties (Santa Clara, Napa, Shasta), along with their families and local partners who attended end-of-week showcases. Secondary audiences included volunteer leaders and staff who participated in educator-only flight orientations and facilitation of capstone presentations. Changes/Problems:The first set of challenges involves hardware availability and federal policy about potential restrictions on Chinese-manufactured drones. To mitigate risk, we diversified platforms during piloting, increased use of small trainer drones for repetition and safety, and began testing a DIY or domestically sourced build that allows students to understand components and maintenance. We hope this approach will be a viable alternative; however, it would require more substantial investment of talent and time for other educators to replicate the curriculum. The second challenge involves instructional design and logistics. ArcGIS activities were highly engaging but introduced cognitive load for many teens, especially early in the week. Youth also wanted more frequent flight opportunities, and idle time increased when hardware was limited. In response, we are adding more scaffolds for mapping tasks, restructuring rotations to shorten wait times, and front-loading hands-on tasks on Day 1 to build confidence before deeper analysis. Checklists and facilitator notes are being updated to make troubleshooting clearer and to lower barriers for new educators. A third area concerns program format and calendar. While a school-year model offers continuity, the summer day camp format proved more feasible for flight operations, outdoor access, and equipment logistics. After consultation with county teams, we transitioned three sites from a school-year pilot model to summer camps. This will help maintain fidelity to the five-day sequence, simplify scheduling, and align evaluation windows. We are, however, keeping one school-year program to serve as a testbed for the curriculum's viability for this type of setting. These changes do not alter the project's goals. They improve feasibility, safety, and instructional quality. By diversifying hardware, strengthening scaffolds, and concentrating delivery in summer windows, we position the project to complete production of Curriculum #1, have a solid draft of Curriculum #2, and continue evaluation, as we move into Year 2. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We provided multiple opportunities for educators (including volunteers, staff, and teen leaders) to get ready to facilitate the curriculum lessons. First, seven educators from the four implementation sites, including the school-year program launching in Year 2, attended the UC DroneCamp educator track. Topics included flight planning and execution, photogrammetry principles, data management, mapping workflows, and use cases in agriculture. Participants returned with improved technical fluency and classroom strategies, which they applied directly in camps and shared with peers. Second, we strengthened support inside the curriculum that doubled as professional development. The front matter clarified lesson goals, safety expectations, checklists, materials, and timing. Lessons include stepwise guidance for flight and mapping activities, troubleshooting tips, and formative assessment prompts. These structures helped newer facilitators lead complex technical content with confidence. Third, we offered an educator-only flight orientation at a central location to practice pre-flight and post-flight routines using the drones they would be operating during the 4-H drone camps. This session standardized expectations across sites and built facilitator confidence before youth arrived. Fourth, during each camp, we conducted daily debriefs that functioned as reflective professional development. Site teams reviewed youth engagement, timing, and safety incidents, identified friction points in GIS tasks, and recorded small fixes for the next day. These notes were shared across counties so that later camps could benefit immediately. The practice created a culture of rapid iteration and collective problem solving. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Because the curriculum remains in draft and under revision, we intentionally limited formal dissemination of the curriculum itself during this period. Our focus was to pilot, evaluate, and improve before wide release. Even so, we shared progress and early outcomes through several channels that serve families, volunteers, partners, and the broader public. At each camp, youth provided a presentation to families and community members. These events featured short talks, maps, and flight artifacts that made learning visible and invited dialogue about real agriculture applications. Showcases helped recruit future participants, surfaced partner interest, and provided an authentic audience for youth communication practice. We maintained a public program webpage that explains goals, activities, and contact information. It served as a stable point of reference during piloting and was linked in family handouts so that interested audiences could follow the project's development and subscribe for updates. Local and industry media amplified the work. Coverage of the Santa Clara and Napa camps introduced the program to regional audiences and highlighted youth experiences and safety practices. An industry piece profiled the concept of a week-long agriculture drone camp, connecting it to workforce relevance and broader STEM education goals. These stories helped frame the project for decision makers, prospective partners, and funders while we continue to revise the materials. We also prepared families and youth to continue learning while the curriculum is finalized. A "What's Next" handout aggregated opportunities such as joining 4-H clubs, youth competitions, Esri learning paths, UC DroneCamp, and, for older teens, study resources toward FAA Part 107 certification. This ensured momentum for motivated participants and strengthened ties between the project and community ecosystems. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In Year 2, we will finalize curriculum #1, beginning by strengthening scaffolds for ArcGIS tasks, increasing structured flight time through smaller rotations and additional trainer drones, and tightening the capstone so that data interpretation and communication are achievable within a set timeline. We will move the curriculum through copy editing, graphic design, and accessibility review, and prepare a clean educator guide with consistent lesson architecture, safety checklists, troubleshooting guides, and printable materials. Concurrently, we will continue with implementation of a school-year 4-H drone program in Placer County. We will begin development of Curriculum #2, for intermediate/advanced teens who have completed Curriculum #1 or equivalent experience, outline learning objectives, assessment strategy, safety parameters, and a culminating deliverable (for example, an innovation challenge in which teams design, test, and communicate a drone-enabled solution for an agricultural or land-stewardship problem). We will also assemble a small advisory group, including youth reviewers and county partners, to provide feedback on clarity and usability before camps in summer 2026. For evaluation, we will refine the survey and focus group instruments based on the pilot experience and establish a cross-site data collection calendar. We will implement a plan for compiling de-identified datasets, coding qualitative feedback, and generating brief data memos that feed directly into improvement cycles and reporting. Where feasible, we will add simple performance tasks that align to core objectives, such as interpreting a basic orthomosaic or explaining the steps from flight plan to map. To address hardware and policy constraints, we will finalize a platform strategy that reduces reliance on potentially restricted imports, expands use of small trainer drones for skill practice, and pilots a do-it-yourself (DIY) or domestically sourced build for instructional purposes. Procurement and maintenance plans will be aligned with safety and instructional goals. For dissemination, we will update the project webpage with a timeline for release, create short overview materials for educators and administrators, and identify venues for presentations. We will coordinate with county teams to schedule Year 2 camps and a small youth showcase that invites stakeholders to see the work, and we will begin preparing Curriculum #1 for submission to national 4-H curriculum review when ready.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Curriculum Development (August - May 2025): We translated the project logic model into a backwards-designed sequence of 14 lessons that move youth from drone fundamentals to capstone application. Lessons cover equipment and setup, safe and legal operations, airspace and chart reading, crew resource management, flight planning, manual and autonomous flight, image capture for mapping, data processing and visualization in ArcGIS, and data ethics. The curriculum is organized for 25 hours of learning experiences and ending with a culminating project and showcase (Lesson 14). We had structured internal reviews and engaged youth expert reviewers from the National 4-H GIS Leadership Team to critique clarity, relevance, and feasibility. Feedback led to clearer checklists for pre-flight and post-flight, added scaffolds for GIS tasks, and more explicit support for teamwork and communication. Implementation (June-July 2025): We completed full formative pilot testing of Curriculum #1, SkyMappers: Agricultural Drones and GIS Mastery, at three county 4-H youth drone camps. Three week-long 4-H drone camps were implemented in Santa Clara, Napa, and Shasta counties. Each site followed the same core sequence and concluded with youth-led team projects that required planning a mission, executing flight tasks when practicable, processing or interpreting imagery, and presenting findings to families and community partners. To increase authentic exposure, sites rotated across drone platforms and GIS workflows, including small trainer drones, larger mapping drones, and autonomous mission planning. Youth satisfaction was strong and qualitative feedback highlighted enjoyment of hands-on flight, interest in agriculture applications, and a desire for more flight time and simplified GIS steps. We administered an end-of-program youth survey using a retrospective pre-post survey to capture perceived growth in drone knowledge, GIS skills, teamwork, scientific communication, and awareness of agriculture careers. We also conducted youth focus groups to document how the experience affected confidence, interest, and sense of belonging, and to surface design improvements. Early patterns point to increased confidence operating drones safely, better understanding of how aerial data become maps, and stronger teamwork language, alongside requests for more scaffolds in ArcGIS and more frequent, shorter flight rotations. We also tested multiple hardware and software to prepare for supply and federal policy constraints. Camps used multiple drone technologies, compared stabilization and sensor performance, and exercised checklists, logs, and autonomy tools that mirror agricultural industry practice. Finally, we advanced public awareness. Local media covered the Santa Clara and Napa camps to share how we were preparing youth to use agricultural drones safely. Additionally, families and community partners attended capstone showcases, which doubled as dissemination and feedback venues. Together, these efforts delivered on Year 1 goals: design, pilot, evaluate, and refine a comprehensive youth curriculum that integrates drones and GIS for agriculture contexts.

Publications

• Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: UC ANR. Ag from Above x Ag for All (AFA2)  Youth Drone and GIS. UC Science Connect website. https://ucanr.edu/site/uc-science-connect/ag-above-x-ag-all-drones. 2025