Emily Huddleston
Drone Team Coordinator
Room Number: 105
Email: ehuddleston@bellvillebrahmas.org
Meeting dates, times, and location still need to be confirmed with Mrs. Huddleston.
The Bellville High School Drone Team gives students hands-on experience with drone technology, flight operations, problem-solving, and teamwork. Students develop their piloting and technical skills while preparing for competitions and other drone-related activities. Coverage should focus on the students, skills, challenges, preparation, technology, and competition experiences behind the team.
- Learning and improving drone piloting skills
- Preparing for drone competitions
- Competition results and team accomplishments
- Practice flights and training
- Students mastering difficult flight maneuvers
- Drone construction, maintenance, and repairs
- Programming, autonomous flight, or navigation challenges
- Troubleshooting technical or flight problems
- Team strategy and preparation for competitions
- New drones, equipment, or technology being used
- Individual student accomplishments
- Teamwork and student leadership
- Students overcoming problems during practice or competition
- New members learning to fly or operate equipment
- Major milestones and memorable competition moments
- Career or educational opportunities involving drone technology
Covering the Bellville Drone Team Beat
Start Here
- Introduce yourself to Mrs. Huddleston and explain that you are covering the Drone Team for the BVP Newsroom.
- Ask how the Drone Team works and what types of competitions or events the team participates in.
- Ask how she prefers to be contacted and how far in advance interviews, photography, or video coverage should be arranged.
- Request the current schedule of practices, competitions, events, and other important dates.
- Find out what students are currently practicing, building, programming, or preparing for competition.
- Ask what skills students need to learn and demonstrate.
- Find out how competitions work and what students are expected to accomplish.
- Ask for the names and roles of students on the team.
- Ask whether there are safety rules or restrictions for photographing or filming drone flights.
- Check with Mrs. Huddleston regularly for updates and possible stories.
- When you discover a possible story, submit it as a pitch before beginning full coverage unless your teacher tells you otherwise.
Your Responsibilities
- Check for Drone Team updates at least once each news cycle.
- Maintain contact with Mrs. Huddleston and team members.
- Keep track of practices, competitions, projects, deadlines, and results.
- Watch students as they learn to fly, practice maneuvers, troubleshoot problems, repair equipment, and develop new skills.
- Look for stories involving difficult challenges, unusual projects, major improvements, or students mastering difficult skills.
- Pay attention to competition preparation, not just the final results.
- Watch for technical problems and how students diagnose and solve them.
- Look for teamwork, leadership, strategy, and experienced students helping newer pilots.
- Pitch promising stories to the newsroom.
- Arrange interviews, photography, and video coverage in advance.
- Confirm student names, competition names, placements, dates, and technical details before publication.
- Follow up after competitions and major projects to find out what happened and what comes next.
Important
A successful flight or competition result isn’t necessarily the whole story. Some of the best Drone Team stories happen while students are practicing, experimenting, troubleshooting, and trying to make something work.
A drone completing a difficult course may represent dozens of failed attempts. A competition placement may come after weeks of practice and adjustments. Find out what students were trying to accomplish, what went wrong, what they changed, what finally worked, and what they learned along the way.
You also don’t need to understand drone technology before you begin reporting. Ask students to explain technical information in plain language. If you understand what the drone is supposed to do, why it’s difficult, and how the students solved the problem, you’ll be able to explain the story to your audience.
Reporting Your Drone Team Stories
Possible Story Ideas
- Drone Team preparing for an upcoming competition
- Students learning difficult flight maneuvers
- A student competing for the first time
- How students prepare for a competition course or challenge
- A drone problem the team had to diagnose and solve
- Students repairing, modifying, or improving a drone
- Team strategy and how students divide responsibilities
- A student who has made significant improvement as a pilot
- New drones, equipment, software, or technology
- Competition results and student accomplishments
- Students learning programming or autonomous-flight skills
- Behind-the-scenes preparation before a competition
- How experienced team members help newer students
- A particularly difficult competition challenge and how the team approached it
- What students are learning through the Drone Team beyond simply flying drones
Signs There May Be A Story
Pay attention when:
- The team begins preparing for a competition.
- Students are learning a new or particularly difficult skill.
- A drone repeatedly fails to perform as expected.
- Students have to troubleshoot, repair, or redesign something.
- Someone makes a major improvement after struggling.
- The team changes its strategy or approach.
- A new drone, component, program, or piece of equipment is introduced.
- A student reaches an important milestone.
- Competition assignments or teams are announced.
- The team earns a placement, award, or other recognition.
- Something unexpected happens during practice or competition.
- Students are spending significant time preparing for one particular challenge.
Remember: A problem can be just as good a story as a success. The interesting part may be figuring out how students solved it.
Questions to Ask: The 5 W's and 1 H
You will not necessarily ask every question below. Select the questions that fit your story and ask follow-up questions whenever an answer is unclear or incomplete.
Who was involved?
- Which students were involved?
- Who was flying the drone?
- Who handled repairs, programming, strategy, or other responsibilities?
- Who helped solve the problem?
- Who should be recognized for the accomplishment?
What happened?
- What was the team trying to accomplish?
- What challenge were the students facing?
- What went wrong?
- What changes or adjustments did they make?
- What was the final result?
When did it happen?
- When did preparation begin?
- How long did students practice?
- When did the problem first appear?
- When was the competition or event?
- What happens next?
Where did it happen?
- Where did the team practice?
- Where was the competition or event held?
- Where did students test the drone?
- Where will the team compete next?
Why does it matter?
- Why was this challenge difficult?
- Why did the team choose this approach?
- Why was this accomplishment important?
- Why did something fail or need to be changed?
- Why should other Bellville students care about this story?
How did it happen?
- How did students prepare?
- How did they diagnose the problem?
- How did they decide what to change?
- How did students divide responsibilities?
- How many attempts did it take?
- How did the final result compare with where they started?
People You May Need to Interview
Depending on the story, consider:
Mrs. Emily Huddleston, Drone Team Coordinator
The student or students directly involved
The drone pilot
Students responsible for programming, repairs, or technical work
Team leaders or experienced members
New members learning the activity
Students who solved a particular problem
Students who competed or earned recognition
Competition officials or organizers, when appropriate
Whenever possible, talk to the students actually doing the work. Mrs. Huddleston can provide background and official information, but the students can tell you what the experience was actually like.
What You Need to Collect
Before writing your story, try to obtain:
- Correct spelling of all student names
- Grade levels and team roles
- Name and date of the competition or event
- Official competition results, if applicable
- What challenge or objective students were working on
- Details about how students prepared
- What problems they encountered
- How those problems were solved
- Specific examples of improvement or changes
- Strong quotes from the students involved
- Photographs of students working, practicing, repairing, programming, or competing
- Video of drone flights or demonstrations when possible
- Photos or video showing the students—not just the drone
- Information about what the team will do next
Before You Leave
Ask yourself:
- Do I have the correct spelling of every name?
- Do I know each student’s grade level and role?
- Do I understand what the students were trying to accomplish?
- Can I explain the drone challenge in plain language?
- Do I know what was difficult about it?
- Did I find out what went wrong and how students responded?
- Did I talk to the students involved rather than relying only on Mrs. Huddleston?
- Do I have details someone watching the drone fly wouldn’t know?
- Do I have a strong quote—not merely “It was fun” or “I was excited”?
- Do I have usable photographs or video?
- Did I get pictures of the students doing the work, not just pictures of the drone?
- Have competition results or awards been officially confirmed?
- Do I understand why this is a story?
- Do I know what happens next?