North West Central School Receives Teacher Innovation Fund Grant

 North West Central School (NWCS) has been selected to receive a Teacher Innovation Fund Grant for its Drone Technology in Agriculture project.

The Teacher Innovation Grant will fund the SEAR (Grades 9–12) and MYdrone (Grades 5–8) programs that integrate drone technology with curriculum-aligned STEM learning and workplace readiness, especially relevant to Saskatchewan’s agriculture sector.

SEAR involves a Crop Disease project in which students use visible-spectrum and NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) aerial data together with ground truthing to detect disease stress, assess input efficacy, and evaluate growth variation. This mirrors real-world precision-agriculture practices used by agronomists to target treatment and optimize yield.

MYdrone introduces foundational skills such as flight safety, regulations, aerial imaging, and 3D modeling through structured rotation stations. Both programs build inquiry-based understanding, problem-solving, and data literacy, and foster 21st Century Competencies(creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and digital literacy). Students actively design flights, collect and analyze data, and present findings, while building awareness of pathways into precision farming, crop management, and other drone-based roles in Saskatchewan’s evolving agricultural sector. "This is a fantastic opportunity for our students to learn with technology that usually isn't available to them,” stated NWCS teacher Stephen Slattery who made the successful application, “I’m especially excited for the students in higher grades who will get to experience real-world drone use in agriculture. I think this will open a lot of doors for them!” He added.

Above: NWCS students look to the sky with their recently approved Drone in Agriculture Project.