Laurie Karolek

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?

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.

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.

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