Laurie Karolek

4th Grade

Meet the Maker

My name is Laurie Karolek. I am a Fourth Grade teacher at Elmwood Elementary. Maker culture is important because it emphasizes the importance of real world problem solving and gives students opportunities to ideate, prototype, and create innovative solutions.

Provocation:

A lot of people get a new tech tool and don’t understand how to use it effectively. How could incoming fourth graders and their families gain a better understanding of how iPads and apps can be used to increase learning in productive, safe, responsible, and respectful ways?


Maker Plan: Introduce 1:1 iPads

This project was designed to ease the implementation of 1:1 iPads for fourth grade students and other new users. Current fourth grade students, after using their school-provided iPads for nearly a complete school year, determined key issues facing new users and then designed lessons to help the new users best utilize iPads for school.

What we are making, Why we are Making, Who we are Making for:

We are designing lessons to teach incoming fourth graders and students new to fifth or sixth grade in New Berlin about the benefits and responsibilities of managing a school-owned iPad.

Maker Skill Builders:

Gumdrop Christmas Tree

We tried this STEM Challenge from teachingtoinspire.com.

Learn More/ Try it

Redesign Rosie Revere's Helicopter

After reading the book, students redesigned and tested paper helicopters.

See video below.

Coding with Sphero

Use block coding to program Sphero robots.

Tip: Use with Math Topic 16

Students coded straight, obtuse, right, and acute angles.

Ready, Set, Design!

The Challenge: Design a device to carry packages.

More photos below.

Engineering paper helicopters.MOV

Fourth Graders teaching Third Graders about having a school iPad

Must know tips for Teachers:

Students gathered data from fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students (one class of each) prior to determining which lessons would be most important to teach.

Digital Learning Survey (Google Form)

Graphs of Survey Results

Individual Survey Responses