The dulcet sound of drones filled the stage as coding and choreography reached new heights.
Middle school students put their coding and dancing skills to the test with an aerial ballet. It’s all part of the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Kitty Hawk program, which introduces kids to aviation and STEM-related careers (science, technology, engineering and math) through the arts.
“We’re basically using this program to code our drones that connect to the drones and we tell it what to do by pressing certain buttons on the computer," said seventh-grader Kyla Jordan, who goes to South Miami Middle Community School.
Students from Hialeah Gardens Middle School, Henry Mack Middle School and South Miami Middle focused on their aviation skills over a 13-week period. Their task at the Adrienne Arsht Center was to crunch codes to fly drones to match movement.
"The Kitty Hawk program is specifically geared toward the innovation of STEM and arts and marrying them together," said Jairo Ontiveros, Assistant VP for Education and Community Engagement at the Arscht Center. "For us, it’s important to make sure that we close the learning gap, especially for minority students that are underrepresented in STEM fields."
“It inspires me to keep doing math because I still like math, but it’s still hard," Jordan said.
More information about the program can be found here.
