I hope that as you read this article you will be excited by the possibilities, temped to take a step outside of your own comfort zone, and inspired to use technology to empower young children and connect with others who care for them in deep and meaningful ways. I have had a variety of experiences over the past 8 years that have led me on an incredible journey from being a technophobic kindergarten teacher to an empowered technology using kindergarten teacher. Along that journey I have written grants as an early childhood instructional technology specialist, testified before Congress, worked as the expert consultant to the USDE Web-based Education Commission, was Director of Curriculum for a non profit technology organization, and thankfully am right back into the kindergarten classroom where I now use technology seamlessly on a daily basis. It is that journey that I wish to share with you.

I have witnessed first hand how technology can mean freedom for our neediest children and empower teachers. I wish to share with you research that proves technology is beneficial when used appropriately, ways it can best be utilized, and resources you can use as you proceed on your own technology journey.

Research shows that it takes 3 to 5 years to truly integrate technology into instruction. Looking back, that was certainly true for me. Though I had been one of those early adopters who got on the technology bandwagon fairly quickly, in the beginning stages I would look at the computer and say "Hmmm, how am I going to use the computer today?" One hundred years ago a new technology became available in classrooms across the country. Any ideas what that was? It was a chalkboard. At first teachers looked at it and said how on earth am I going to use this? Then they figured out that they could display information on it. Later on they realized that they could have students interact with it. Don’t you remember those multiplication relay races on the blackboard we had when we were younger? Next, they started to see that they could use it for differentiation and collaboration. Once teachers embraced the blackboard as a tool for learning it helped make their lives in the classroom simpler.

I feel very blessed in that I have always known that I wanted to be a teacher. I began my teaching career in 1984 at a highly multicultural Title I Technology magnet school just outside of Washington, DC where I was teaching 4^th grade. It was there that I was introduced to computers in education. I had a Pet computer in my classroom, that I don’t think I ever turned on, and an Apple IIe. I, like many other teachers, allowed my students to use the computer when they finished their work, during centers time and indoor recess. I even let my students use the computer to type up their final drafts when they had finished all their editing and revisions. Oh boy, I could just kick myself looking back! Now I allow my students to use technology for any part of the writing process. Inspiration is a great tool for brainstorming. The rapid fire tool allows thoughts to be generated quickly. Color coding helps students and adults organize their thoughts, and being able to toggle back and forth between the concept map and outline meets the needs of multiple learning styles. Inspiration documents can be exported in a variety of formats including html and PowerPoint. Kidspiration is especially powerful for young children due to its child friendly features of text to speech and audio support. Kidspiration templates provide scaffolding and support that even the youngest of writers can feel empowered using.

In 1985 I bought my first computer, a used Apple IIe with a bunch of floppy 5 and 1/4 inch MECC programs and a dot matrix printer for $1,000.00. That was the computer I used for the next 9 years. By 1993 I was using the program Bank Street Writer to type up my class newsletters and resumes.

In the fall of 1994, when my daughter was 4 years old and my son was 1, I was teaching kindergarten. Our school had just been renovated and we got a brand new computer lab with 30 Macintosh computers. Just before the lab opened in November, our staff had a 3 hour introductory training. The focus of the training was on the program KidPix. I remember feeling somewhat nervous. Though I had used computers before I had never used these kinds of computers, multimedia machines with color monitors and little disks, not green screens and big floppy things. I remember thinking that if I touched the wrong button I would break the computer or worse yet, blow up the entire school. Navigating in and out of the programs was enough to drive me bananas. And saving documents, well that was OK, but trying to find them, that was a totally different story!

I’ll never forget the time when the computer told me to "press any key". I actually looked on the keyboard for the "any key"….Grin, grin…

In any event, even though I was feeling overwhelmed that day, my mind started racing about the endless possibilities of activities and ways that KidPix could empower my young students to create, collaborate and communicate. During training I was fortunate to be sitting next to the other kindergarten teacher at my school, also an infant in technology use. As we created our own little community of learners by exploring the tools of this multimedia program together our wheels began turning. We started to think how great it would be that our early emergent kindergartners could record their thoughts and feelings even if they couldn’t write the letters of words. Additionally, the recording capabilities would allow us as teachers to record directions for our students who needed that audio support. Using the keyboard would free the students up to write creatively by taking the labor out of forming letters. The fact that our students could explore typing text and then have the computer read back what they had written blew us out of the water. We were sold! Two weeks later my kindergartners and I were the first class in the computer lab.

OK, now what. There I was, 1 teacher, 25 kindergartners and 25 brand new computers. What should I do? Well I did what any early childhood teacher would do when their students are about to use a new tool, I gave them time to explore. We explored KidPix and at the end of our exploration session we did a gallery walk around the computer lab where students shared what they had discovered or created. This was a way we debriefed at the end of any instructional time and our work in the computer lab was no different.

Well, yes it was. Not only were children sharing about their creations, they were also sharing about the process they went through. I noticed that students asked higher level questions and were forced to use richer language to explain themselves. Sharing about what they discovered and created gave children the opportunity to use lots of oral language.

From NAEYC Position statement:

"Research demonstrates that when working with a computer children prefer working with one or two partners over working alone (Lipinski et al. 1986; Rhee & Chavnagri 1991; Clements, Nastasi, & Swaminathan 1993). They seek help from one another and seem to prefer help from peers over help from the teacher (King & Alloway 1992; Nastasi & Clements 1993). Children engage in high levels of spoken communication and cooperation at the computer. They initiate interactions more frequently and in different ways than when engaged with traditional activities, such as puzzles or blocks. They engage in more turn taking at the computer and simultaneously show high levels of language and cooperative-play activity." I had witnessed this first hand!

After our exploration phase, our work on the computers always supported our instructional outcomes. I needed to teach the students how to use the programs, but didn’t want to take away from instructional time. I wanted to focus on learning with technology, not the technology itself. So I embedded the technology instruction within the content of each lesson. For example, one of our science outcomes was to distinguish between living and non-living things. Using the program KidPix I modeled for the students how to create straight lines by holding the shift key down and also how to choose a variety of different stamps. I also taught them how to use the recording capabilities. After modeling, I had each student come up as we collectively created a picture. This was the guided practice part of our lesson. Next, students worked with partners to choose pictures that represented living and non-living things and placed them appropriately on their documents. They recorded themselves explaining why they made the choices they did. Using technology as a tool for this activity had several advantages over using traditional tools. First of all, it gave my students more pictures to choose from than if I had run off worksheets. Secondly, it took less time for them to flip through the stamps online than it would have if they looked for pictures in magazines and cut them out to glue on paper. Thirdly, students were able to record their thoughts and then listen to what they had said. Therefore, providing them with opportunity to self reflect. Finally, we could print out 2 copies of each document so that both students could take a copy home of their collaborative effort. As closure that day, we pulled all of the slides together into a slideshow and quickly and easily shared everyone’s work with the class. They loved hearing their classmates’ voices. KidPix was a wonderful tool to use because it was so versatile.
 
 

Within a couple of weeks of our first visit to the computer lab, my students were making discoveries about how the programs worked and they had gotten me out of a lot of hot water. I often came upon something technologically that I couldn’t figure out, but my 5 year olds could. Whenever I got stuck on something I asked the kids for help. They were so excited when they could actually help the teacher do something. It made them feel empowered. I didn’t feel like I needed to have all of the answers and asking my students for help allowed me to model life long learning.

In addition to helping me out when I was in a jam, I started to notice that my students who tended to be quiet and more reserved in class would get up in the computer lab and walk to others to show them how to do something. My ESOL students were able to give me a window into their true ability when they had access to the technology. I could see that they really did understand the concepts being taught though they may not of had the language to tell me so. The technology really did help level the playing field for many of my students. As I began to use templates to scaffold and differentiate my instruction I felt I was meeting the individual needs of my students better and everyone proved to be successful in their own way. One of my very young ESOL students who only knew 3 letters typed some letters in KidPix and was so proud! He said to me,

"Look Mrs. Feldman, I am spelling by myself. I am going to tell my Mommy I am better!" Wow.

Going into the computer lab once a week began to seem a little silly. Who ever heard of going to the paper/pencil lab once a week? Though everyone had access to a computer when we were in the lab, we wanted to use the technology on a daily basis. We started to see ways that we could use even one computer in our classroom. We were so into the technology that I grabbed the one computer on a cart that was in the lab and wheeled it into our classroom. We used this COW, computer on wheels, several times a day.

When the students would come in in the morning we used the computer for some form of data collection. The program Graph Club allowed us to make tables, pictographs, bargraphs, linegraphs and circle graphs and change their appearance on the fly. It also allowed us to compare types of graphs and write about what we noticed. The graphs could be printed out, copied and sent home as homework for kids to talk to their parents about. Or they could be printed as big book size and put up on the wall. The ability to save the graphs allowed us to look at trends over time.

In addition to using The Graph Club, we also used the draw feature of AppleWorks to make T-charts. By typing students names as separate text boxes and then saving the document as a template, students could easily manipulate their names, dragging and placing them anywhere on the document. For those students who couldn’t write their names yet, this provided the scaffold they needed to participate independently in our data collection. This was a great way to collect information about whether students wanted to buy pizza or hamburgers for lunch. By saving documents as a template we always had a clean document and could easily substitute the question of the day. We didn’t need to type in students’ names each time we wanted to make a new t-chart.

Making Venn-diagrams in KidPix was another way we collected data each day. The text to speech capability allowed for students to get auditory support for reading our survey question. Now all of us being Developmentally Appropriate Practicing early childhood folks, I know that I don’t really have to state the obvious, but I am going to just to cover my tail. Technology is a tool, and you would want to use a variety of manipulatives and hands-on opportunities as well. I used to say "before using the technology". However, this year I have noticed that making pictographs using Graph Club has helped my students see that you need to work from the bottom up or left to right on a graph. That you can’t just put an icon anywhere on a graph. The computer’s ability to say the numbers helps students to check their own counting accuracy.

In addition to data collection, we used the computer for writing. Every Friday we would do shared writing about what we did during the week in Kindergarten, then I would run copies for the students to illustrate and take home. Using the computer helped me to model the writing process and we had a finished product that looked great in short turn around time.

A few months into our technology adventures we learned about CDs, such as Discis Books and National Geographic. I could set up the computer so it would read and highlight the text word by word, line by line, or page by page. As the computer read the text, it also highlighted each word, which helped my students with Concepts About Print, left to right orientation and return sweeps. My students could also try to read the text independently and when they go stuck they could click on a word to have the computer read it to them. This gave them the immediate feedback they needed. These days there are programs such as PairIt Books, by Stack Vaughn, that guide students to use different strategies to figure out the word instead of just calling the word right away. Now students can also record themselves while reading and immediately listen to themselves as a way of self-monitoring.

By January of 1995 my kids were such technowhizes that I wanted to get the families into see what these kids could do. So along with my colleague, Peggy McLain, we developed Computer Family Night. Computer Family Nights are arranged to give students and their families the opportunity to work together in a computer friendly environment. Students are also given the chance to show their parents just what experts they have become at using the computer. For students who may not have access to computers in their home, Computer Family Nights give those students and their families hands on experience in a nurturing and structured environment. After attending a Computer Family Night session, parents see the value of using technology as a tool to enhance learning.

Students came to school with their families and worked on creating a family KidPix slideshow. They brought a picture from home to scan, we took a digital picture of the family when they came that evening. Families also brought music that they incorporated into their slideshow. They wrote stories, drew pictures, recorded things in their native languages. At the end of the evening each family found another family that they did not know well and shared their slide shows. All families then had a walking museum tour of the complete slide shows as they played continuously in a looped fashion.

The response we got from the families brought tears to my eyes. One woman was so impressed with the skills of her 5 year old that it gave her the courage to go back to school herself. This is a quote from one of our mothers, "Family Computer Nights are a great idea. My child got a chance to teach me lots of things she is learning. I think any activity which helps foster parent-child learning together is wonderful. These extra curricular activities should be expanded for maximum benefit." Since CFN was such a success I wrote an EDS Grant and did it again the next year using HyperStudio. That time the families worked on their family albums for a couple of days and we celebrated with a cultural potluck dinner and sharing of their albums. All of the resources one might need to put together a CFN are on our website at http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/curriculum/littlekids/archive/computer_family_night.htm

In March of the same year, 1995, I attended the Maryland Instructional Computer Coordinator’s Association Conference, my first technology conference ever. There was not much there for early childhood educators. However, I was fortunate enough to attend a session geared to special needs teachers. They were using the Edmark Early Learning Series programs Bailey’s Book House, Millies Math House, and Sammy’s Science House. These presenters had lots of manipulatives, children’s literature and a variety of art materials. They taught me how to use the CDs as if I were using a book as a springboard for a lesson. They showed me that I didn’t have to use every part of the CD, I could visit the part that pertained to the objectives being taught. These programs looked so inviting and easy to use. I went home that night and bought my first real computer, a Macintosh Performer, and 3 CDs, Millie’s Math House, Bailey’s Book House and Sammy’s Science House, to this day they are still some of my favorite early childhood software titles.

When I brought my computer home that evening, my son, who was 2 at the time, began to show a strong interest in it. I started staying up until 2:00 in the morning teaching myself how to use these early childhood programs. The learning curve for technology was steep, but once I learned a little I could piggyback on the skills I already had. When my son would see me explore these child friendly programs he would climb into my lap and try to explore himself. At first he needed my help holding the mouse. I would gently place my hand over his and I guided him to move around on the screen and click where he wanted to. It took him a month to make the relationship between the cursor and the mouse before he was interacting with the programs all by himself. The Sorting Station in Sammy’s Science House intrigued him. He was trying to sort items into the trashcans. For about 2 weeks he kept trying to put the items into the wrong cans. The trashcan would put its hands over its lid and gently say, "Not this one try the other one." Finally, one day, he moved the item to the other trashcan and from then on if he made a mistake he would immediately self correctly. Observing Jake going through this process using the computer gave me a window into his understanding of cause and effect. Wow!

Developmentally appropriate digital content guides students to success and that is exactly what I had observed with my son as well as the students. Over the next few months of using programs from the Edmark Early Learning Series Jake was zipping in and out of programs and becoming much more verbal. Observing children using technology has given me a window into their understanding that I don’t always have using traditional tools.

Developmentally appropriate digital content, software, CDs, and websites, are valuable teaching tools when they present concepts and skills at the level a child is ready to learn using a method that reflects that child's interests and needs. DAP Digital Content is: open-ended, exploratory, children control the program, it contains problem solving, and is full of concrete representations which function realistically and has built in success.

I love to show the letter machine from Bailey’s Book House, as an example of built in success. I know that we as good early childhood educators have the patience of saints. However, when we have taught a concept over and over again, the pitch of our voice sometimes changes as does the color of our face and the width of the veins in our necks. The computer however keeps the same even tone, provides auditory and visual feedback simultaneously and removes choices guided children to be successful and then rewards them with the same positive reinforcement they would have received if they had answered correctly the 1^st time.

Sue Haugland’s Developmental Software Scale is a good resource to use when deciding whether digital content is appropriate. Her research shows that children exposed to developmentally appropriate software make significant gains in intelligence, nonverbal skills, structural knowledge, long-term memory, and complex manual dexterity.

When concrete experiences are combined with developmentally appropriate software children also show significant gains in: verbal skills, problem solving, abstraction, and conceptual skills.

OK, it had been an entire academic year since I had been using technology with kindergartners. I wanted more. So in the summer of 1995 I attend my 1st National Educational Computer Conference in Baltimore, MD. I noticed that there just wasn’t much there for EC educators. A few sessions, and even less good software. I had discussions with several upper grade teachers that said one of the following 2 things to me. Either that little kids are incapable of using the computer or that if they use the computer in the lower grades that there would be nothing left for them to do when they got to the upper grades. Obviously neither of those statements were true! However they lit a fire under me to spread the word about technology and young children.

In November of 1995 I was feeling all alone in the world of technology and young children until I happened upon the NAEYC Technology and Young Childhood Caucus out in Anaheim at the Annual Conference. I got the impression that NAEYC wasn’t too keen on technology for young children. They put the technology resource room as far away from the main events as possible. I had to follow a bunch of balloons out to an annexed part of the convention center where I found a handful of very enthusiastic early childhood technology pioneers. There were a few computers, a couple even hooked up to the Internet, a few piles of handout and a display. When the annual meeting was called to order there were about 9 people in attendance. Because I was so new to this technology business I tried to keep my mouth shut most of the time. However, I just couldn’t understand why the technology resource room (techroom) was so poorly attended. I suggested that we think about doing technology spotlight sessions in the techroom the following year to get some more traffic in the lab. I also wanted to be able to keep in touch with these folks throughout the year so I offered to create an electronic maillist so that we could keep in touch via email. At the time we didn’t know about listservs.
 
 

Due to email I was able to stay connected with my new friends, especially a gentleman who worked at Apple. We would email on a regular basis. He told of the ACOT research and exposed me to some different software programs, such as HyperStudio. Back at school, the person who trained me on KidPix had become my mentor. She gave me a "top-secret" book about the Internet and then invited a couple of my friends and myself to her apartment to actually see it. She was using the browser Mosaic, pre Netscape and IE. How cool, we could see not only text, like we could in email, but we called also see pictures. We knew that this was going to be big! One morning, I got a phone call from my mentor, she had hurt her back and asked if I would go train at a school for her, the same training she had given us 9 months earlier. I said I felt like I didn’t know it well enough, but she convinced me to do it. I was driving on the highway brainstorming ideas for training on a sticky. I was scared and excited. That day was a turning point for me. I really enjoyed working with teachers and sharing my ideas. I had the best seat in the house. I think I learned more from them that day then they did from me. That experience sparked me to get into staff development. After all, if Vivian had asked me to train for her, there couldn’t be a lot of early childhood folks out there that were comfortable with technology yet. So I started creating some after school training opportunities for early childhood teachers in my school district and began presenting at some local conferences.

By the fall of the next school year I found myself working at the Board of Education in their technology office, what a hoot. I may have been the queen of KidPix, but I really didn’t know much about how technology worked. Thank goodness the boss who hired me believed that it was more important to have someone who was good instructionally and willing to learn and ask for help, than it was to have a technology savvy person who was not strong in instruction. This is an important idea to keep in mind when looking for technology staff developers. It is essential that they are good instructionally and that they have a vision and can think out of the box. The technology skills are secondary, they can always be paired with a technologist.

As an instructional technology specialist I worked on a team with 12 other technology specialists who serviced the prek-12 spectrum. We were divided by elementary, middle and high school teams though we did do some cross grade level training. During staff meetings I always found myself saying, "What about little kids? What about little kids?" No one was thinking about their needs or the needs of their teachers when making purchasing, networking or instructional decisions. I was literally the squeaky wheel. My boss finally said to me, "Dara, if you want to be an early childhood technology specialist then find some money and you can do whatever you want to. A few days later she gave me the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund Grant to write and after 2 long months of research, collaboration, writing, rewriting, and more rewriting the grant was funded and I became an early childhood instructional technology specialist. The project was initially funded for $187,000. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to continue to write the grant each year for the next 4 years, raising over 1 million dollars to support technology in early childhood.

In 1997 the President’s Committee on Technology in Education recommended that we give special attention to professional development. Staff development is a major factor in the success of technology integration and can help prevent computers from being just one more failure in attempting to assist economically and culturally deprived children. The 1997 Expert Panel said, "At least 30% of the technology budget should be used to provide teachers with ongoing mentoring and consultative support, and with time to familiarize themselves with available software and content, to incorporate technology into their lesson plans, and to discuss technology use with other teachers. As schools continue to acquire more and better hardware and software, the benefit to students increasingly will depend on the skill with which some 3 million teachers are able to use these new tools (Expert Panel 1997)." A school can have the best software ever made and access to the Web on every computer. But it won't see much difference in student learning, experts say, unless its teachers know how to use the digital content in their classrooms (Totter 1999).

We put 60% into our budget for staff development. The focus of our project was to provide professional development to teams of K-2nd grade teachers, special education resource, and ESOL teachers, specialists and instructional assistants to increase their ability to use technology as an instructional tool to improve student achievement in reading and writing. Our activities were aligned with our school district’s Reading Initiative as well as the National Staff Development Standards so that participants received comprehensive, cohesive training. Throughout the professional development activities, school teams reflected upon their progress through the change process and work collaboratively to solve problems and make decisions about using the available technology as a tool to support their balanced literacy programs. Participants explored, developed and implemented developmentally appropriate, differentiated activities that utilized technology to support the reading and writing instruction of all students.

Teachers and specialists from the 34 participating Title I schools attended 4 hands-on workshops throughout the school year. Each session focused on using technology to support Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) Reading/Language Arts Outcomes and provided opportunities for participants to share and problem solve with others. The workshops acquainted participants with instructional strategies, classroom management strategies, software applications, websites, and lesson plans that used technology to meet state reading outcomes and enhance a balanced literacy program. During our workshops teachers had the time they so desperately needed to explore digital content and process how they can best use technology to support student achievement.

My partner, Bonny Chambers, and I made visits to each participating school to model lessons and conduct small group, just in time training. Participants felt that the benefits of seeing technology being used with their own students, in there own instructional settings, and having time to debrief afterwards was a very powerful component of our project.

To provide additional and more immediate school based support to participating schools, a Project Mentor program was established. Each school identified a teacher with strong leadership skills and a solid understanding of the reading/language arts curriculum and objectives to serve as the project mentor. These mentors received two days of introductory training during the summer, attend bi-monthly after school sessions, and participate in on-line discussions via email.

The Project Mentors’ role was to act as the primary point of contact between the 34 participating schools and the ECTLP staff. In addition, they provided instructional support to grant participants, disseminated information about technology and balanced literacy to staff members not directly participating in the project, helped ensure that software and hardware supplied by the project are shared equitably, and performed basic trouble shooting.

To provide opportunities for participants to share and explore ideas with teachers from different schools, several special interest workshops and discussion group meetings were held after school with peers who were not participating in the project.

In addition to professional development we wired participant’s classrooms, gave each school 3 computers on carts, color printers, a digital camera and a selection of software.

Training videos, e-mail conferencing and the ECTLP web site enabled participants to communicate, and extend their professional development experiences. The ECTLP web site disseminates training resources, lesson plans and best practices to teachers, parents and students in Montgomery County and throughout the world. The website can be viewed at www.ECTLP.org. All of our training resources, links, materials and even our actual grants are posted there. Working on the grant was an amazing experience for me. I loved going to different schools, working with a variety of teachers and their students.

To our surprise, in June of 2000 our projected, which had been nominated by Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, won the ComputerworldSmithsonian Awards in the category of Education and Academia. This was quite a tremendous honor! Now I am not sharing this to toot my own horn, I am sharing this to illustrate just how far technology in early childhood had come over the past few years. The fact that technology and early childhood were even in the same sentence was quite an accomplishment, but the that out of almost 100 projects from around the world, the one that focus on early childhood won, how cool was that?

Just after receiving the award my school district changed from dual platform school district to single PC platform district. This was a difficult change for me because I am a firm believer that Macs are more appropriate for young children due to their ease of use, one button mouse, SimpleText that is built into every computer( which provides text to speech capabilities), tools that make movie making and website production simple and excellent professional development. I gave my 2 weeks notice and resigned from MCPS.

As luck would have it, on my first day without a job I was suppose to present my project at Secretary Riley’s Technology Conference, how ironic. As I was talking to folks that day, I bumped into the Executive Director of the Web-based Education Commission. He happened to be sitting next to me the night of the Computerworld Awards and asked me to testify at the National Educational Computing Conference in June, which I did. Here he was again, what a coincidence. I told him that I just resigned from my school district and he asked me to come work for him. I told him I did not feel qualified, but appreciated the offer. He was very persistent and asked me to think about it and to let him know in the morning.

That night as I labored over the decision in my head and in my heart, the powers that be demanded that I take the job, so the next morning I told him I would do it, not sure what had compelled me to say yes. The next day I found myself on Capital Hill working for the Web-based Education Committee, which was responsible for writing the report to the President entitled The Power of the Internet for Learning. I thought to myself, why on Earth am I here? I am an early childhood technology advocate, but I don’t know much about the politics and all of the issues surrounding the Internet. And then a woman wearing a NAEYC pin walked up to me with a bunch of reports she wanted me to give to the commissioners. I was so relieved to see another early childhood person there, that I immediately introduced myself. I told her that I was president of the NAEYC Technology Caucus and asked her if she wanted to join our organization. She looked at me as if I had three heads and then walked away. I wasn’t sure why but really didn’t pay much attention. Later that afternoon I had a little time so I thought I would look over the report she gave me. I almost fell on the floor. She had given me the Fool’s Gold Report. This woman had been one of the authors and she wanted me to pass these out to the commissioners. OK, now I was beginning to see why I had to take this job. So as I passed out the Fool’s Gold Report I said to the commissioners, "You didn’t get this from me and you don’t have to read it!"

At home that evening I read through the report shuddering. It was full of half- truths, misquotes, allegations that basically stated that technology was the cause of all ills in young children. The Alliance requested a moratorium on all computers until more research had been done. According to the Alliance risks to young children included;

lack of imagination, social isolation, repetitive stress injuries, concentration problems, and poor language and literacy skills.

After reading the report I concluded that we did have one thing in common, we all cared about children, but the Alliance was clearly out of whack. They did not share the side of research that showed how technology positively impacts imagination, socialization, concentration and language and literacy.

"Ding", just as I was finishing up reading the report, I got an email from the folks at ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Educational. Because I was president of the NAEYC Technology and Young Children Caucus, they wondered what I thought of Fool’s Gold and asked if I would help them with a response. Absolutely! I didn’t have to do it alone however. I immediately sent out an email to our NAEYC Technology Caucus listserv requesting help and ammunition. Within hours I received emails back loaded with research and personal observations from early childhood professionals from around the world. We had a rich discussion online and from that I crafted "our" response. Dr. Mark Ginsberg, executive director of NAEYC, also a member of our Tech Caucus, felt compelled to write his own response to the Alliance. That was a sure sign that technology was beginning to be viewed a little more popularly by NAEYC. Back in Nov of that year Dr. Ginsberg had cut the virtual ribbon kicking off the launch of our techandyoungchildren website which was a collaborative effort of the caucus facilitated masterfully by Bonnie Blagovevic of Maine.

Let me digress for one moment. The first time I put the weblinks together for the NAEYC annual conference, NAEYC sent them to me as hard copies and even faxed me some. That was fun trying to type in hundreds of URLs that presenters had sent to NAEYC. I tried to explain why I wanted them emailed to me but they just didn’t get it. Finally, they are showing that they understand the value of technology in early childhood by including it in their professional development plans, providing electronic discussion forums on their websites, and allowing people to register for things on line. They have even asked that all state affiliates create a technology plan.

OK, let’s get back to the debate with the Alliance. So how does technology make a positive difference for young children? Let’s look at imagination and creativity for a moment. As early as 1984, Vaidya & McKeeby found that computer drawing experience allowed some children to create more elaborate pictures than those they could create by hand. They were then able to transfer components of these new ideas to art work on paper. Additionally, there are many ways to conceptualize and measure creativity, including creative thinking and learning in a variety of subject matter domains. Digital Images allow students to incorporate authentic art into their creations. Digital Video provides a vehicle by which dramatization can be incorporated into multimedia. Music can easily be created using a variety of software programs such as Thinkin’ Things and Making Music. Programs such as KidPix and iMovie give children the tools they need to mix music, art, photos, text, and movies together for exciting electronic creations
 
 

In 1995, we argued that "we no longer need to ask whether the use of technology is ‘appropriate’" in early childhood education .

Research shows that computers facilitate both social and cognitive type of play. Computers produce a more advanced cognitive type of play than other centers.

Computer play encourages longer, more complex speech and the development of fluency. Compared to more traditional activities, research shows that the computer elicits more social interactions than different types of interaction.

Projects, such as the ones from I*EARN, help connect children with people of other cultures, locations, and ages. IEARN is a non-profit global network that enables young people to use the Internet and other new technologies to engage in collaborative educational projects that both enhance learning and make a difference in the world. The TEDDY BEAR PROJECT pairs schools/classrooms to exchange a 'Teddy Bear" or other soft toy. The bear then sends home a diary by email describing its adventures, the places it has been, as well as the things it has seen and done. This project can provide the stimulus for children to learn more about other places and cultures through the bears' experiences, fostering tolerance, understanding and hopefully breaking down cultural barriers.

The majority of my work with technology and young children has been in the area of language and literacy. One key to technology’s effectiveness is its interactive quality, so students can get involved with the content as they manipulate the media (Farmer 1998). Multimedia allows the user to proceed as a function of his or her interest, prior knowledge, and reading ability (Hubert 1997). Children have more control over their learning. Research on early reading development supports the effectiveness of the simultaneous presentation of written words and sounds for helping children’s decoding skills. "Several studies confirm that the combination of text with pictures, video, and sound help children and adults to better comprehend and remember the text materials if the images illustrate the information and relate to the users’ knowledge, skills, and abilities (Herring-Harris1996). "

One form of multimedia that can have many benefits to young readers is electronic books. Electronic books provide a wealth of opportunities for language acquisition and appeal to students of all multiple intelligences. Using an electronic book combines reading, writing, listening, and speaking as part of the development of the children's literacy skills. They help students in decoding by presenting written information and spoken words simultaneously. E-books support comprehension by combining words with related pictures, sounds, and video. Recording capabilities and text to speech technology gives students the opportunity for self-monitoring and provides them with immediate feedback. Using electronic books enhances memory skills by presenting written and spoken words at the same time. They help readers construct mental models for information. They also allow emergent readers to follow along with a story even if they cannot read the text independently, by highlighting words as they are read aloud.

Technology can empower young children to communicate their thoughts and feelings. The ease of composing, revising, and extending encourages young writers to develop their compositions and produce their best work. With traditional tools, such as handwriting and typewriters, writers often avoid improving their compositions because of the tedium of re-copying (Daiute 1985). "For some students pressing a button is easier than manipulating a blunt stick of wood (Jankowski 1998)." We have often heard the anecdote about the child who was a two line story person, but when he got to use a computer he wrote a page on his first attempt. In other words, he was always able to write a page, he just did not have the right tool. Technology can be the right tool for supporting blooming authors.

Computers and peer tutoring enable children to write before they can spell with a pencil. "Computers are not just a tool, they are also a means for expression and in this way encourage independent thought and effort (Jankowski 1998). Teachers report computers enable students to write more and higher quality stories. Children are willing to proofread their computer written work. Additionally, the ability to include quality pictures into their writing has proven to be highly motivating.

"Using technology for shared writing allows students to see their words woven into the tapestry of the entire class’ ideas, printed out, and posted on the wall which provides an important feeling of public accomplishment that all students can share (Guthrie and Richardson 1995)." "When writing to an audience of their peers, students often spend more time writing, editing, and polishing their work. Through the WWW, students can take that concept of writing for their peers to the next level-the world! While we often publicize students who win awards for essays or creative writing, the Web opens up the opportunity for all students to see their work in print (Repman 1998). "

Well that took care of the Alliance… As I continued my work at the Web-Commission I made sure that we used terms PreK-16 instead of K through 16 and helped them with the professional development recommendations. As painful as it was working in a cubicle without kids and teachers around me for 4 months, I did learn a tremendous amount and as a result have a much broader view of technology, the power of it both good and bad. We must be vigilant that we use it appropriately and only when it adds value. And we must be careful not to add to the digital divide. In December of 2000 after our press conference, our commission ended and it was time for a new job.

For 2 short months I was the Director of Curriculum Development for PowerUp, which is a nonprofit that works towards bridging the digital divide. It wasn’t for me. It was too far away from instruction and much too far away from early childhood! So I decided to go out on my own as an independent consultant.

Big mistake! First of all, I am really a public school educator and I missed being part of a system. My biggest problem with it however was that for the most part organizations were asking me to come in and do one shot trainings. That goes against my religion. My experience and research shows that one shot trainings don’t work. That in order for professional development to be successful a variety of items need to be in place; at least 30% of technology budget should be set aside for professional development, technology training should be aligned with priorities, there should be ongoing and just-in-time support, a community of learners should be established, access to technology should be provided at work and at home, sufficient time for exploration should be built in, and resources and discussion forums should be posted online. I couldn’t take it any more. I missed the kids and a collegial community. What was I going to do?

After a couple of months of soul searching my son came home from school one afternoon and told me the kindergarten teacher at his school was retiring. That was just the sign I was looking for! I immediately sent an email and my resume to the principal and within a week I was hired as the new kindergarten teacher at my son’s elementary school. I was back in my school district, back in the classroom, and going to school with my son. What a dream come true! I finally had the opportunity to put into practice what I had been preaching as a technology specialist over the past 5 years.

Last September, at our open house, the day before school started, I already had my students using the technology. They voted using GraphClub about what pet they wanted for our classroom, so when school started we got a bunny rabbit named KC. My son and daughter assisted me by taking pictures of all of my students using my Mavica digital camera. I like the Mavica because I can save my pictures to a floppy disk and I don’t need any special software or wires to down load my pictures. I simply put the floppy disk in my computer and use whatever software to open them up. I used their pictures to create a template of their face as the center of a flower in a flowerpot. The first day of school they used crayons to draw themselves as a flower. I then displayed them on my bulletin board, entitled, "Watch our kindergarten blossom" which had Anne Geddes pictures as a boarder.

The way I used technology the most was to make electronic books with my kids using digital pictures with PowerPoint and/or KidPix. We did a lot of shared and interactive writing. I would import the pictures into PowerPoint and we would use them as a springboard for a discussion or writing. Students were able to record themselves reading what they had written. To make hard copies of the books, I would duplicate each slide within PowerPoint, so that when I printed them out as 2 slides per page, I could run them back to back on the copier and cut them apart so that each child would have their very own book to read and keep. We made all kinds of books about being special, Earth Day, Field Day, and even How to Tie Dye. Sometimes I would print the books out in the notes view within PowerPoint so there would be six slide per page. Then I would make copies for each student and send them home as our newsletter. We wrote books with narrative text, persuasive stories, poems, and more. My favorite book was our expository text that we wrote for the in coming kindergarten students and gave out at kindergarten roundup. It had predictable text so it was appropriate for early emergent readers and it showed the soon to be kindergartners what they would be doing in kindergarten. Each current kindergarten child got to illustrate the cover of a book and sign their name as the illustrated. As the "soon to be kindergartners" left round up they got to select a handmade book to take home. It was a lot more meaningful than the grass faces we had made in the past.

In addition to the ebooks, my students loved the World Wide Web. I would copy and past urls into Word documents and color code them so each student knew exactly where to go when they opened up the document and didn’t have to type in the website. I also printed out these documents with a description of each website so families could access them at home or their public library. Some of our favorite sites included BoowaKwala.com, PBSkids.org, and enchantedlearning.com.

Email was a big hit with parents, kids and colleagues alike. My students would often email me trying to persuade me to do something. When one of my students was at home recuperating from an operation we had a synchronous email discussion with him. We took a picture of what we were doing in class and sent it to him in a matter of seconds. That made all of us feel more connected.

Parents who had access to email would email with questions concerning their child and I could respond in a timely manner at my convenience. Professionally, I used email and the web to collaborate with colleagues and take online courses in the comfort of my own home.

Using databases and spreadsheets really saved me a lot of time in terms of management. I used my student information database to make labels for cubbies, folders, and nametags. I put cute little icons and even color coded them for am and pm classes. In my school district we have to give 7 reading assessments to each student 2 times a year and we put the information in a color coded spreadsheet. This allows us to look at data by color, red means our students need a lot of support, yellow and green are in between, and blue shows that they are progressing well. This class spreadsheet helps us to make fluid and flexible reading groups and gives us data that we can use when we articulate with 1^st grade teachers and at parent conferences.

Word processing documents allowed me to create activities and homework assignments that aligned with my outcomes and could be easily differentiated. Using websites that have clipart, such as discoveryschool.com helped me make my activities, homework and newsletters more appealing as well as added visual supports.

We made several iMovies. They were a fun way to capture what was happening in school. I used them as a way to document the learning process of students, as part of my own teaching portfolio, and as a way for students to see themselves as learners. One of the computers in my classroom had all of our movies loaded on it and my students would love to watch themselves on it. At the end of the year I burned all of our movies and ebooks to CDs or copied them onto VHS tapes so my students had an electronic portfolio of their year in kindergarten. The families were most appreciative.

Over this past summer I ran an electronic adventures technology camp for kids going into to 1^st grade in Chicago. It was hard for me to have technology as the focus, since I was so used to viewing it as a tool. We made movies, and ebooks, and logos that we printed out and ironed onto shirts, as well as webpages. The children were thrilled creating a simple page with their 1^st name, a picture, something special about them and their favorite website. You should have seen their faces the 1^st time they clicked on a link that they had created that went to their favorite website. It was magical to them and very empowering.

On the 2^nd to last day of camp we put on an electronic circus. We used Inspiration to brainstorm parts of a circus, them we color coded our web. Some kids used KidPix to create invitations and tickets, others researched circus websites. Everyone got a chance to take some of the video and also to star in an act or two. We edited the circus together, adding music, voice-overs, captions, transitions and credits. We even had outtakes at the end. We shared our video with our families the last day of camp and I must admit it was the greatest show on earth that I had ever helped create in just 6 hours!

Shoooo, so that brings us up to this current school year. My 18^th year in education. How have we used technology in my classroom so far? Our first ebook was entitled, "Here are my Kindergarten Friends". The pattern was, "This is my friend _____." The sentence was written above each child’s picture. Parents enjoyed this book because it was helpful when trying to arrange playdates for their children. Have you ever asked a kindergartner who they wanted to play with? They can point to the person but they don’t know their name? This trusty look book helps prevent that problem.

We have made an iMovie about our school, learned about hotlinks, how to navigate on the Web, made patterns and practiced position words using BoowaKwala. We have focused on concepts about print, left to right orientation and spaces between words, using the electronic books from the CD, Let’s Go Read. We have written poems using Word, brainstormed ideas using Inspiration, collected data using Graph Club, and much more.

We are currently working on an iMovie which will be an invitation to literacy.

We are going to use it as an invitation to invite parents to participate in a family literacy program. It will be created in both English and Spanish and will be broken into 3 parts. The first part will be an introduction about the family literacy program. Part 2 will have activities that families can do together at home, even if they can’t make it to family literacy events. Finally, the 3^rd part will be movies of the children themselves doing fingerplays, reciting poems, practicing their alphabet, singing songs, doing puppet shows and more. Hopefully, this will be a VHS or CD that the students will want to watch over and over again. We are hoping this project will help are English as second learners and early emergent readers from financially disadvantaged homes strengthen their oral language and other literacy skills.

I have used technology as tool for a variety of professional purposes. I have created presentations for back to school night and PTA meetings. I have updated parents via email on a regular basis about what is taking place in our classroom. I have attached pictures so that they can see what is happening and included websites for enrichment. For those families who don’t have access to email I print out a hard copy and send it home with the child.

What I have enjoyed most of all so far this year is getting email from my students such as this one. Laurie is very shy and does not speak English, she speaks French.