Beginning Early- Technology in Pre-School

If we are truly going to see an education landscape filled with technology, then it has to begin the moment students start school. The students attending school at the earliest age must be given the vocabulary, skills, and basic understanding of a computer and its resources. To that end the state of Texas has developed a PreK TEKS in regards to technology instruction. Like all curriculum documents it is verbose and technical, but it does highlight some key points that I will outline below.

One quick word prior to the breakdown of the TEKS. It should be said that in order for the PreK TEKS to work, they must be the first steps in a line of higher developed TEKS, that is, they should be step one in a scaffold of skills that students must learn. For instance, if a High School student should learn how to produce a well designed publication ( such as a newsletter) then there is a long chain of requisite knowledge to be taught long before a student ever opens up Publisher or Quark Express. For instance, they need to know how to properly turn on a machine, save their work, type, find and document images, etc. Those beginning steps lay the groundwork for all technology education.

Thoughts on the PreK TEKS:

• Knowledge is broken down into 5 key categories, all of which are kid friendly in both phrasing and setup.
• The website itself is geared toward interactive eduction, unlike the HS Tech TEKS, which read more like a business manual.
• All skills are supported within the normal curriculum. For instance, as students learn to read in general, they learn to read webpages. Just as they are taught to decode words in a book, they are taught to decode words on a webpage.
• And finally- my favorite part of the entire setup: Students are taught the proper vocabulary for discussion in a technology world.