iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

As Maggie opened the door, a pair of first graders yelled “duck!” and luckily she did. The 7-year-olds had just launched a flying saucer and it was headed straight towards her. Maggie moved cautiously, sidestepping to avoid two students chasing down a runaway Sphero and was approached by a student about becoming a guest star in her latest stop motion movie, which was currently in production. Finally, she made it to the charging station and her shift at the learning resource center (LRC) officially started.

Maggie is a fifth grader at Roosevelt Elementary School in Park Ridge, Illinois and in Fall 2017, she was trained to become a “TechXpert” at her school so she could coach fellow students daily during the tech lab at the LRC. The TechXpert program wasn’t something we had initially planned to build. It came about because students like Maggie were willing to help us solve some problems we encountered when we started our journey to roll out a collection of new tools we didn’t know much about.