Early Childhood

Is Virtual Kindergarten a Good or Bad Idea?

By Robin L. Flanigan — June 11, 2013 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Connections Education began offering virtual classes for kindergartners in 2002, long before online education began rising in popularity for elementary-level students.

Since then, kindergarten enrollment—now at 2,250—has kept pace with enrollment in its other grades, growing at between 20 percent and 25 percent a year, according to Steven Guttentag, the co-founder and chief education officer of the Baltimore-based online-curriculum provider, which offers virtual classes for grades K-12.

“When we started, one of the most common questions people would ask is why we were putting kindergartners on a computer all day,” says Guttentag. “But getting a virtual education doesn’t mean they’re online 100 percent of the time. I’d estimate they’re only on about 20 percent of the time.”

When not online, kindergartners practice forming letters to work on fine motor skills, for example, or work with manipulatives to learn basic shapes, he says.

Even so, some child-development experts are unsure kindergartners can get the necessary amount of social and emotional interaction in virtual environments.

“Children need to be developing 21st-century learning skills that include creativity, collaboration, and real-world problem-solving through group projects with shared goals,” says Roberta L. Schomburg, a professor of early childhood education at Carlow University in Pittsburgh and the vice president of the governing board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “Collaborative learning is very hard for a five-year-old to do online.”

Engaging Young Ones

In Media, Pa., the nearly 3,800-student Rose Tree Media school district’s virtual kindergarten combines at-home and at-school assignments, serving 236 pupils through interactive lessons in science, math, reading, and other subjects. The online learning component is done at home with their parents.

See Also

Read a related story, “Virtual Learning for Little Ones Raises Developmental Questions.”

Virtual-kindergarten teacher Christa Consadene, who designed the program, grabs children’s attention with fun educational videos, then assigns a hands-on activity to reinforce the information they just learned. She uses screen-capture tools, flip video cameras, familiar icons, and away-from-the-keyboard assignments to keep young ones engaged in her online course.

“If the content isn’t right there and ready, you lose their attention,” she says. “And I didn’t want the kids to be at the computer the whole time.”

Also offering personalized lessons that have students act as teachers, Consadene often works with small groups during the regular school day to mine material she can embed into the course. During a lesson about onomatopeia, which is when the sound of a word imitates the source of the sound it describes, for example, she had pupils illustrate examples, write an accompanying script, then record themselves on video. In keeping with the “down on the farm” theme for 2012-13, the children used farm images and sounds in their work.

Consadene has been involved in other projects that bring technology to the district’s youngest students. She helped design an online math course for 1st graders—built around themed units such as fairy tales, weather, space, and insects—and is now looking into ways to provide live instruction online for her virtual-kindergarten course.

“There isn’t such a thing as being too young for online learning, simply because of the wealth of valuable resources out there for children,” she says. “And when they get really involved, it just makes the information that much more real to them.”

A version of this article appeared in the June 12, 2013 edition of Digital Directions as Kindergarten The Virtual Way

Events

School & District Management Webinar EdMarketer Quick Hit: What’s Trending among K-12 Leaders?
What issues are keeping K-12 leaders up at night? Join us for EdMarketer Quick Hit: What’s Trending among K-12 Leaders?
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
Teaching Students to Use Artificial Intelligence Ethically
Ready to embrace AI in your classroom? Join our master class to learn how to use AI as a tool for learning, not a replacement.
Content provided by Solution Tree
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Teaching Webinar
Empowering Students Using Computational Thinking Skills
Empower your students with computational thinking. Learn how to integrate these skills into your teaching and boost student engagement.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Early Childhood How Kindergarten 'Redshirting' Is Changing
Redshirting was once largely a choice made by higher-income parents of white boys.
5 min read
A group of ethnically diverse Kindergarten children sit on the floor of their classroom, cross-legged and dressed in casual clothing.  They are all looking up at their teacher who is holding out a storybook and reading to them.  They are all smiling and listening attentively.
iStock/Getty
Early Childhood Head Start Teachers Will Earn More—But Programs Might Have to Serve Fewer Kids
A new federal rule will raise wages for Head Start employees—but providers won't get any additional funding.
7 min read
Preschool teacher with kids sitting nearby while she reads a book.
iStock/Getty
Early Childhood EdReports Expands Curriculum Reviews to Pre-K
Non-profit EdReports will review pre-K curricula to gauge its alignment with research on early learning.
2 min read
Boy raises his hand to answer a question in a classroom; he is sitting on the floor with other kids and the teacher is sitting in front of the class.
iStock / Getty Images Plus
Early Childhood The State of Teaching Young Kids Are Struggling With Skills Like Listening, Sharing, and Using Scissors
Teachers say basic skills and tasks are more challenging for young students now than they were five years ago.
5 min read
Young girl using scissors in classroom.
E+ / Getty