The stage was set, the drones were lined up, and education representatives from across Colorado gathered to watch. Students from St. Vrain Valley Schools, members of the first high school drone team in the country, prepared to send 200 small flying devices into the air and shape them into breathtaking formations, in front of the historic Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs.
Up went the drones, and then, suddenly, down went the drones. A frequency conflict resulted in the team losing control of their devices, only to watch them crash back to earth, many of them destroyed. As their district’s superintendent and other attendees of the Colorado Association of School Boards conference helped them literally pick up the pieces, the students were shocked.
“The kids were crushed,” said Joe McBreen, the assistant superintendent of innovation at the Longmont, Colorado, school district. “They felt like they failed their superintendent.”…