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

Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.
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
Privacy & Security Webinar
Navigating Cybersecurity: Securing District Documents and Data
Learn how K-12 districts are addressing the challenges of maintaining a secure tech environment, managing documents and data, automating critical processes, and doing it all with limited resources.
Content provided by Softdocs

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 What the Research Says 6 Challenges for Early Educators as Preschool Growth Halts
School enrollment for the nation’s youngest learners has nosedived—and could cause long-term problems.
4 min read
Close crop of the back of a pre-school girl's head showing her playing with foam puzzle pieces of shapes and numbers.
iStock/Getty
Early Childhood What the Research Says Starting School in Infancy Can Help Low-Income Children Keep Up With Peers in Elementary School
Research on a birth-to-4 initiative in Tulsa finds academic gains through 3rd grade.
4 min read
Teacher Silvia Castillo, center, reads a book about dinosaurs with Everett Fisher, left, and Jaz Endicott in a toddler classroom at Kids First on Jan. 30, 2019 in Lincoln, Neb.
Teacher Silvia Castillo, center, reads a book about dinosaurs with Everett Fisher, left, and Jaz Endicott in a toddler classroom at Kids First on Jan. 30, 2019, in Lincoln, Neb.
Gwyneth Roberts/Lincoln Journal Star via AP
Early Childhood Why Parents 'Redshirt' Their Kids in Kindergarten
Parents have a number of reasons why they decide to delay their children's school entry, but it's not always a good idea.
5 min read
Students participate in a pre-kindergarten class at Alice M. Harte Charter School in New Orleans on Dec. 18, 2018. Charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately operated, are often located in urban areas with large back populations, intended as alternatives to struggling city schools.
Students participate in a pre-kindergarten class at Alice M. Harte Charter School in New Orleans on Dec. 18, 2018.
Gerald Herbert/AP
Early Childhood Q&A An Investment in Early-Childhood Education Is Paying Off Big
Richard Tomko believes that expanding the early education pipeline buffers schools against enrollment loss and academic struggles.
2 min read
Dr. Richard Tomko, Superintendent of Belleville Public Schools in Belleville, N.J., visits science teacher Paul Aiello’s Medical Academy Field Experience class on Tuesday, January 10, 2023. The Medical Academy’s class uses Anatamoge tables, an anatomy visualization system that allows students to garner a deeper, comprehensive understanding of the human body and medical tools to prepare them for careers in the medical field.
Richard Tomko, superintendent of Belleville Public Schools in Belleville, N.J., has expanded academic programs while restoring trust in the school system.
Sam Mallon/Education Week