SAKURA SCIENCE High School Program Group 4
Experiencing Drone Programming at Tsuchiura First High School
On Wednesday, October 23, 22 high school students from India in SSHP Group 4 visited Ibaraki Prefectural Tsuchiura First High School and Affiliated Junior High School. The school is a traditional school with a history of more than 125 years, but it is an integrated junior high and high school with an international flavor, as its principal, Mr. Puranik Yogendra from India, leads the school.
After the welcoming ceremony given the students, they started the collaborative experiment of "Drone Programming using Scratch." The students learned how to fly a drone while avoiding set obstacles, and used the learning software Scratch to program.

After hearing an explanation of Scratch, the Japan-India mixed team divided into 10 groups began by measuring obstacles. It is also wonderful that the students were naturally able to cooperate to form teams that took on needed roles of group leader; other students took measurements, and there were those who were responsible for programming. The students proceeded with programming while considering flight routes. They also made repeated program corrections testing whether they could actually fly as they had planned.




Finally, the time came for a flight contest to gather the results of their hard work. A team that had good results in their test flight but failed in the actual test. Conversely, there were many ups and downs in the event, such as teams that had great success in the actual test after they revised their program even though they tried many times without very good results. However, everyone was very excited by participating in the drone programming practice until the end.

In the afternoon, Principal Yogendra gave a lecture entitled "Find your niche. Being successful wherever you go." He spoke about his background starting from his childhood upbringing and about how he became the only foreign principal in the Japanese public school system. He enthusiastically appealed to his students, using the example of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a genius Indian mathematician who studied mathematics by himself and discovered many mathematical formulas and theorems. He gave words of support and encouragement to the students from overseas by saying "try to refine your personality. Soft skills such as communication skills are important as well as studying. Always keep a positive attitude, find your strengths, and focus on developing them."

Although their stay was short, just one day, the Japanese and Indian students completely opened up to each other through their programming experience and lunch together. In the end, the Indian high school students waved goodbye to their Japanese friends as they reluctantly left.
