Digitizing Inquiry-Based Science in Early Elementary Grades

Abstract

Education was disrupted this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar to societal shifts, teachers were nimble to quickly adapt to a distanced or remote context by recreating traditional curriculum as virtual content. By leveraging digital technology to transform learning experiences, early childhood educators may see beneficial results in how children and families embrace science inquiry in a virtual context. This chapter describes how digitized inquiry activities can be developed by early childhood teachers (PreK-3rd grade) in response to teaching and learning in a distance and remote learning context, with an in-depth description of a 3rd grade teachers' experience. The authors, in a scholarly conversational manner, discuss what was learned in the process of creating the virtual science instructional videos and provide ideas for others to engage in the creation of high-quality virtual learning experiences for young children.