Technology Integration at the Kindergarten Level

Many early childhood educators would agree that technology can have a powerful impact on children's learning. In fact, many teachers readily welcome new technology into their classrooms and take on any opportunity to acquire new technology. However, just having new technology available in the classroom isn’t enough to have a positive impact on student learning. New technology is a great classroom resource but teachers must receive proper training on how to use it and implement it into the curriculum to achieve the desired results.

Research has shown notable benefits technology has on student learning when it is properly integrated in the kindergarten classroom. New technology motivates students to interact with the subject area over and over again in unique and exiting ways. It helps to enhance and increase learning potential for all students by involving them in the learning process. As opposed to the traditional learning method that involve seeing and hearing new information directly from the teacher, different forms of new technology provide students opportunities to experience new knowledge in new and abstract ways. Clearly, technology has the power to transform students from passive learners to active learners by allowing them to learn and share their understanding in a variety of ways.

Some teachers believe that kindergarten is too early to introduce kids to technology because it replaces time spent on important foundation skills. While many teachers may believe this, it is necessary to understand that the purpose of using technology in the kindergarten classroom is not to teach students to use technology for the sake of learning to use it or to replace integral skills that need to be learned. Simply stated, the goal of using technology at the kindergarten level is not to teach the use of technology but rather teach with technology to expand, enrich, implement, individualize, differentiate, and extend the overall curriculum which, in return, has a positive impact on student learning. It seems that an important consideration here is to find a reasonable balance that allows students to acquire the necessary skills while using new technology to expand new learning.

Many kindergarten teachers have successful integrated new technology into their classrooms. Developmentally appropriate technology that is currently being used includes document cameras to demonstrate ideas, interactive white boards to explain and illustrate concepts, classroom computers for educational software and websites, digital voice recorders for literacy development, multimedia technology, and so forth.

Below are just a few ideas to help kindergarten teachers successfully integrate technology in their classrooms.

1. Allowing student to illustrate their own kindergarten alphabet book using a paint program.
2. Researching and selecting instructional computer programs that support learning objectives in the classroom.
3. Using the website Starfall.com for reading development (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension).
4. Using a SmartBoard which has a touch-sensitive screen to provide a kinesthetic approach to learning (math games, making words, tracing numbers, etc.).
5. Allowing students to create an illustration for their writing piece using KidPix.
6. Using narrated online children’s stories to extend literacy in the classroom.
7. Using multimedia to create slide show demonstrating step-by-step directions for an activity or routine.