She Maps TOD title
She Maps tod drone 1

Run your own event!

The Tournament of Drones is a one-day drone competition that aims to evaluate students’ analytical thinking, cooperation, and problem-solving abilities with manual and coded drone skills.

The teacher pack from She Maps contains everything you need to organise a drone competition. These resources can be used by schools to organise an intra or inter-school competition.

You can choose to run a tournament of drones at a time that suits you and your school OR you could run your tournament of drones in Term 4, 2022 and enter the competition to win prizes for your school.

Tournament Details:

Entry Requirements:  Open to all Primary & Secondary schools.
Prizes –
5 New DJI Tello EDU MicroDrones
How to enter: 
Write a short description of how the day went, and include the BEST photograph of the day. (Previous examples below)
Deadline: Midnight Friday 16th December 
Winners Announced – January 2023

tournament of drones she maps
Days
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The tournament consists of 4 challenges!

The Tournament is judged on the participants being able to show the judges their drone skills at each activity.  It is run in a round-robin format with each team allowed a 5-minutes discussion time before the task is started.

Challenge 1

Space Race (Obstacle Course)
A drone needs to be flown from the main spaceship to an asteroid to collect data. The aim is to get through the obstacle course within two minutes and 'land' the drone on the asteroid.

Challenge 2

Drones to the Rescue

A fire has started in the local community and your team has the opportunity to help slow the fire's spread. The aim is to get as many water suppressants onto the fire target as quickly as possible within two minutes.

Challenge 3

Code Conundrum
A container ship has run aground out to sea. Debris from the ship has washed ashore along the coastline and teams have been asked to collect images to record where it is. Pilots are unable to see the flying area as is it beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS).

Challenge 4

Digital Storytelling

This challenge is to create a 2-minute video that is a persuasive piece. The video should show creativity and student flair on how drones are being used in your school, why they are a tool for the future, and what problems they could solve.... the options are endless. We want to see how BIG your school's dreams and plans can be with drones.

Everything you need to run a successful tournament!

A Tournament of Drones is an annual event where the students get to 'show off' the drone flying and coding skills they've learnt across the school year. The competition is designed to test students' teamwork, problem-solving skills, creativity, technical flight skills, and analytical thinking. But most importantly, it is supposed to be FUN!

Like all events, there's a fair bit of organisation required, so we thought we'd save you heaps of time and create everything you need, so all you have to do is make it happen!  In the She Maps Teacher Resource Pack you will find everything your need to run a highly successful tournament.
She Maps TOD teachers manual

Teachers

Manual

She Maps TOD certificates

Certificates

She Maps TOD floor plan

Floor

Plan

She Maps TOD scoring

Scoring

Sheets

She Maps TOD poster

Posters

She Maps TOD safety poster

Safety

Signs

How to Enter

Here's how to enter:
  1. Run your inter/intraschool competition & take lots of photographs on the day! 
  2. Write a short description of how the day went, and include the BEST photograph of the day.  (The one that depicts the essence of the day!)
  3. Fill in our Tournament Entry Form and be in with a chance to win!

Entries Close:  Friday 16th December

Winner Announcement: Early 2023

She Maps tod graphics logo

Crowning of the champions!

Organisers can choose how to award the certificates and/or trophies. Whether it be at the end of the day or at a later date post-competition.

Some points to consider that can affect the way you present your certificates/trophies:

  • Judging time – Do the judges have enough time to come up with clear identified winners in the digital storytelling?
  • Travel times for teams – Will the students get back to their school in time?

There are 3 Certificates  Available – Winner, Highly Commended & Encouragement

She Maps tod certificate encouragement award 2022
She Maps tod certificate highly commended 2022
She Maps tod certificate winner 2022
tod assets badge winner 2022

Tournament of Drones Participants - 2021

She Maps TOD park ridge state high school

PARK RIDGE STATE SCHOOL 
Lead Teacher: Matthew Jenkins
Date of Tournament: 8/12/21
No of participants: 22

We actually ran two tournaments! One was a practice run, with a class of our most engaged year 7’s. It was a good move – we ended up changing the structure of the day, and even moved the location! (Turns out halls in summer in QLD are sauna’s without fans on. Also, it turns out trying to have fans on caused the Tello’s to work harder and overheat – who knew!) Our genuine Tournament of Drones was a fantastic day for the students who signed up from across the school. We were also lucky to have two of our new 2022 Digital Technologies teachers with us to help run activities and get used to the drones they will be teaching with next year. The students had a fantastic time and it was great to challenge their thinking around what drones can do and how they can be used to solve problems in society. The local paper is publishing an article on our event too, which is wonderful news. I’ve attached the article as the last file in this form. Thank you so much for supporting us with these resources!”

WESTLAND HIGH SCHOOL
Lead Teacher: Matt Harrison
Date of Tournament: 8th and 9th December 2021
No. of participants: 36

This was our first Drones Tournament ever and we were excited to make our own local maps of Hokitika, the West Coast and the Southern Alps of New Zealand by printing them over multiple A4 coloured sheets and stitching them together. We encouraged WHS students to represent their four Hapu (school house teams – four coloured elements of Air [Hau – in white], Earth [Papatūānuku – in green], Fire [Ahi – in red] and Water [Wai -in blue]. ) to try their best over four events: driving a Sphero bot through a lego maze and three flying events. Students enjoyed the timed obstacle course with Hapu flags, getting bonus points for flying through pool noodle hoops. We didn’t have the mirror film, so instead we flew a precision LEGO “search and rescue” landing and lastly, a “Drop in the Ocean” 3D printed egg cup to deliver ‘first aid – air drops’ of ten tiddlywinks. Interestingly, some teams tried to get the best times by dropping a cupful, rather than one at a time. We also welcomed visiting students from our primary schools, St Mary’s Hokitika and Ross School, who all had a blast. We had a few wifi interference issues and a couple of drones misbehaved. We had a couple of crashes and broken 3D egg cups when low flying flips went wrong. Luckily, I’d 3D printed plenty of spare ones. The students supplied plenty of energy and enthusiasm whilst I rapidly charged as many batteries as quickly as possible. I totally recommend the Combo Boost pack, but next year I think we’d like to do coding of the Tello Edu drones in a swarm, perhaps as a performance piece. Hopefully, the mirrored film will be available from Amazon and after I’ve 3D printed the mirror holders, we can try the coded missions in Python with Year 11 NCEA students.”

westland high school She Maps TOD
Students flying drone with an obstacle
Tournament of Drones 7

INGHAM STATE HIGH SCHOOL
Lead Teacher: Jennie Nash
Date of Tournament: 15 November 2021
No of participants: 12

“Our tournament involved 3 main events. The Drone Rescue, where students had to fly their drone over a disaster zone and locate any injured people. We had 6 “casualties” that they needed to find. The 2nd event was the drone obstacle course where students needed to code their drone to navigate. The 3rd event was a drone race along a course. Students found the events the right mix of challenge and fun. We ran an intraschool event this year to test out the competition before we launch an interschool event in 2022. Overall, it was a great success that we look forward to sharing with other schools in 2022.”

EDGEHILL STATE HIGH SCHOOL
Lead Teacher: Adam Hooper

Date of Tournament: 29 November 2021
No. of participants: 17

“The TOD at EHSS this year involved a mix of years 5&6 students (10 females and 7 males), some of whom had never flown before. Before the tournament, each participant gave up a minimum of 8 lunchtimes and a half-day of lesson time to acquire the necessary skills to safely fly and code the drones. Competition on the day was fierce with the experienced STEM Captains in year 6 being pushed hard all day by the year 5 boys one of whom recorded the fastest Space Race time of 1 minute 44 secs. The winning team’s video presentation was successfully used to convince our principal to upgrade the school’s drone fleet ahead of next year’s competition. However, the definite highlight was the persistence and teamwork demonstrated by the year 5 all-girl team who managed to accurately code their drone to complete the coding conundrum in the shortest time. Edge Hill SS will definitely be involved next year and hope to compete against other schools in person once more”.

edgehill state high She Maps TOD

Need to buy drones or image mats for your tournament?

Try before you buy

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drones in forestry yr 5 6
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