I should probably be a little more specific... I used some of the money in my budget to purchase a drone for the technology department.

It is something that I can have a teacher use with the students, but it is also something that I can play with myself when the students and teachers are not using it.

If this is your first time buying or using a drone, the DJI Tello EDU is a pretty awesome little drone with a great price tag. You can get the non-edu version for around $100. I think my total came to around $150 because I bought some extra propeller guards.

It is a good thing too, because my first day flying it I smashed it into the wall of the gym. Apparently, there are two speed modes and when you put it on the fast speed it flies like a bat out of hell.

The way I understand it, the EDU version of the Tello gives you the ability to program the drone using languages such as Python, Scratch, and Swift. Besides the fact that I thought it would be cool to play around with, that is the main reason I bought the drone.

My goal is to take it into a classroom and have the students learn to do some programming all while having fun flying a drone. I have to admit after about fifteen minutes of playing with the thing, I was totally hooked. These things are really cool and super fun(and addictive)!

It came with some landing pad type things that I haven't fully taken the time to understand what they are for yet. I know there are some sensors on the bottom of the drone so I am assuming the colors allow you to give commands to the drone or something like that.

Actually now that I look at them a little closer there are patterns on the card so my assumption is that you can make the drone perform the flight path by showing it the card.

I placed a pen cap near the drone so you can get an idea of just how big it is. I actually have a teacher in my district that already owns a couple of these for his classroom. He said he tried to fly it at home one time, but it is so light that even the slightest wind carries it away. Apparently, the breeze pushed his into the side of his house.

Good thing we have a large gym we can fly it around in!

My biggest fault with the drone is the battery life, but I know that is the case with a lot of drones. It only gives you a flight time of about 15 minutes and it takes about an hour and a half to fully charge. I really feel I should have purchased an extra battery or two and a charging station. I still might.

The 5 MP camera captures pretty decent video and still pictures. I was going to post a video of me crashing it into a banner, but I might save that for another time. There is also a stunt mode that allows you to do flips and other cool things with the drone.

I haven't dug into the programming part of it yet, but you can control the drone from a smartphone app that shows you what the drone camera sees on your screen. It also gives you the typical "two stick" control style.

I did have some trouble getting my phone connected to the drone. It connects via WiFi and there were some issues with my building wireless interfering as well as my cellular data. The best method they suggest for connecting is putting your phone in airplane mode and then connecting to the Tello's wireless network.

I also had to put my Pixel 2 XL into developer mode and adjust some of the USB debugging settings to allow the camera feed to display on my phone screen.

With some drones costing thousands of dollars the Tello is a great starter drone if you have a large enough indoor space to fly it in. Like I said, just be careful when you flip it into fast mode! The good thing is the propellers stop as soon as it registers impact with anything.

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