Students Will Make Drones Under Business Partnership

BIRMINGHAM, MI - Students at two Birmingham high schools are learning how to make and fly drones under a partnership that boosts the school district’s technical career curriculum.

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Giuseppe Santangelo, founder and CEO of Rochester-based Skypersonic and a teacher at Oakland University and Wayne State University, demonstrated the tethered indoor drones to the Birmingham school board last week, The Birmingham Eccentric/Hometownlife.com reports.

“This is cool stuff,” said Santangelo, a Birmingham Schools parent who came to the United States who from Italy in 2010. “ ...When you create something that flies, it’s a very cool feeling.”

Santangelo is helping the district develop a curriculum that other schools may want to use. Students at both Seaholm and Groves high schools could be building their own drones by the end of the school year, and designing them within two years.

Birmingham Superintendent Daniel Nerard said the arrangement is an example of how partnerships between the school district and businesses should work. “ … It has to be mutually beneficial,” he said.