It was up, up and away for students at Sulby Primary School who mapped out their surrounding area using drones.

Currently 18 children in Year 5 (ages nine to 10) are on their way to becoming qualified drone pilots as part of an ongoing ICT project at the northern school.

After a number of ICT lessons on The Computer Bus with the recently retired Alex Townsend, plus a collaboration with Edge Hill University’s senior lecturer in primary education, Sarah Wright, the school started up the project.

On Tuesday, the students got to fly a number of Potensic mini drones.

They are yet to fly the school’s two large Holy Stone HS100 drones.

The drones were used to teach the children mapping skills with the students also using technical drawing applications and software.

They built on their work with Mr Townsend by creating detailed aerial maps of the school with hyperlinks to each classroom.

Once completed, the maps will be linked to real time footage collected from the GPS drone cameras.

The project has inspired the children with student Joey Lythgoe now wanting to pursue a career in architecture. He called the drones ’awesome’.

Student Aimee Doran said: ’We fly them with our friends and fly them so high up in the sky and see things that I could never see from standing still on the ground and then we can add this to our maps.’

The school said that many of the children have persuaded their parents to buy similar models at home to support their work in school.

It’s hoped that the Key Stage 2 children will lead the way in their ICT education through their experiences with the cutting-edge technology. Head teacher Martin Jackson said: ’We are delighted to work with Sarah Wright from Edge Hill University to develop our IT approach and to learn about some of the fantastic technological developments which we can utilise in school to enhance learning.

’We originally considered this project when The Computer Bus retired and have had great fun developing our pilot skills and discovering the real potential of this creative use of technology in education.

’This provides an exciting addition to the virtual reality experiences being developed in school.

’Sarah has advised us that this is the first project of its type she has come across in the UK and she is very excited to be involved.’