How Can Kindergartners Learn Web 2.0? Ask Maria Knee
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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 5/14/2008 2:10:00 PM
Kindergarten teacher Maria Knee of Deerfield, NH, is this year’s winner of the Kay L. Bitter Vision Award for Excellence in Education, which honors an early education teacher. Check out Knee's collection of online teaching tools and community outreach. Then read what she says about fusing kindergarten and 21st-century skills. As Knee puts it, blogging is the "bulletin board of the 21st century."
People don't usually talk about kindergarteners and "Web 2.0" in the same breath!
That's changing a lot. I see it as a natural fit because kindergarten has all of these wonderful emerging skills, and technology is the tool to bring these skills—literacy especially—into having a real purpose. Giving my children an opportunity to have a true audience through our classroom blog, especially, was something that was a fit for 
me—instead of having meaningless writing exercises and no one understanding whom they're writing for.
Tell me about some of your projects.
Originally, I needed a way to communicate with parents, because most of my population is working, and they don't get into schools anymore; they don't have enough time, but they're dying to know. I had a Web site, but it was hard to maintain. I was going to workshops and conferences and hearing about this wonderful tool called blogging. So I started the blog—a good way to think about it is as the "bulletin board of the 21st century." On the blog, I post descriptions that sometimes the kids help write, and photographs telling parents about our work.
How do you use [the computer communications tool] Skype in the classroom?
We've talked to an [undergraduate Regina University education] student in Saskatchewan, because she "adopted" our class and is kind of a blogging mentor. She's learning about tools she'll someday use as a classroom teacher.
We've also talked to children, to other classes, to a classroom in Georgia. They were studying about the Iditarod, just like we were. Because it was video-Skype, they could watch the whole presentation with the sled dogs in my classroom.
The kids have their own blogs?
Each child has their own blog, off my own blog. They type entries every couple of weeks. If they have a photo they take of some work [they can post it] or do a project.
Kindergartners write?
They type like they write—representing the sounds they know with letters they know. The only keyboarding we work on is encouraging them to use two hands for the two sides of the keyboard. It's all in their own spelling; and for some [parents], it's really hard to read. I, as the editor/publisher, put up a transcription of their work so people can know what they say.
The award, sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education, or ISTE specifically honors an early-education teacher. You also won this year's New Hampshire Society for Technology in Education award. What's your message to your pre-K–2 colleagues?
From my point of view, the use of technology does not have to be an extra layer—something else you do in your classroom. There are enough online tools that make it very affordable; there doesn't have to be a lot of expense, buying special software. When I think about implementing technology in the classroom, I genuinely think, "How can this help with the real tasks that kids need to do?"
