History
K12 Internet Pioneers Gleason Sackmann and Karen Ellis
The K12PlayGround is a website providing information about K-12 schools in the United States. Founded by Karen Ellis and powered by Drupal open source code, the site includes a directory of over 100,000 K-12 school websites. Users can find, register, and update school information.
The organization has collected and disseminated K-12 school information since 1991, before the World Wide Web existed.
The K12 Internet Starts in 1991
When the general public was legally allowed to use the internet.
- ► K12 Internet Pioneers — Gleason Sackmann collected the first text file of K12 websites announced on the internet.
- ► Karen Ellis built The Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc.® and hosted the K12 school websites database. She has been collecting K12 information online since 1991 before there was a World Wide Web.
K12PlayGround.com contains the first database in the world to gather and display the URLs to school websites ever built on the internet in the United States — actually in the whole world.
People just like you sent their school website addresses to us. We checked them out and put them into the database.
Gleason Sackmann — Internet Pioneer
Rated #10 on Newsweek's prestigious list of “50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet” — Newsweek Dec 25, 1995 / Jan. 1, 1996
1998: Sackmann received the SIG/Tel Educational Telecomputing Outstanding Service Award.
Internet Pioneer Gleason Sackmann — NetHappenings ©1989 mailing list
- ► Gleason's “Hot List” (published on NetHappenings Mailing List) morphed into the “K12 American School Directory” — a database first published on The Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc.® then when it got too big it became K12PlayGround.com
What Was It Like in the Beginning?
All this happened before your school teacher was born!
Gleason Sackmann — first to wire North Dakota's K-16 schools to the internet.
Internet Pioneer Gleason Sackmann actually climbed up on the school roof to wire a telephone connection into the internet.
- ► Everything you know that is on the net now wasn't there in 1991
- ► Long before there was something called the World Wide Web
On the Shoulders of Giants
SENDIT: North Dakota's K-12 Telecommunications Network
Paper presented at the Annual Conference on Rural Datafication (22nd, Minneapolis, MN, May 22-24, 1994) by Gleason Sackmann
SENDIT is a telecommunications network for North Dakota educators and students in the K-12 environment. Through SENDIT, both teachers and students have access to the Internet, and some of the isolation associated with the rurality of North Dakota has been diminished.
Developed by the North Dakota State University School of Education and Computer Center, a variation of Cleveland Freenet's bulletin board system, FreePort, was installed on the SENDIT NeXT host computer in 1992. Over 25 public libraries became members with the same access as the K-12 community.
Explore Our Interactive Timeline
Journey through 30+ years of K-12 internet history — from 1989 to today — in an immersive visual timeline.
American Citizens like you and me are the “FOLK” who made the K12PlayGround.com™
WE ARE THE UNKNOWN CULTURE MAKERS
WE ARE THE COMMUNITY SCHOLARS that built the net and the content on it.
YOU COLLECT AND PRESERVE OUR CULTURE
Perspective
What made Apple and Microsoft big companies?
The K12 Department of Education money collected from our School Taxes. Every K12 School District in the United States bought their products. Your School Taxes built those companies!
Our Public School District Teachers wired our schools, bought their hardware and their software. The schools teachers paid with our taxes taught your children, trained future workers the skills needed to work at these companies. In solidarity there is strength.
The Future: Evidencing Skills in the Age of AI
In an era when AI can write essays and pass tests, the skills you can't fake are the ones you demonstrate with your body, your peers, and your voice.
AI is transforming the job market. When algorithms can generate written work and pass standardized tests, traditional credentials lose their power to distinguish one candidate from another. The future belongs to students who can show what they can do — not just tell.
K12PlayGround.com™ embraces just-in-time learning — the idea that students evidence their skills in real time by linking to videos of their projects, explaining what they've accomplished and what they've learned. No test can capture what a student demonstrates when they build, perform, create, and collaborate.
These project videos become a living portfolio — an online resume that future employers can discover and evaluate. Students elect to build their professional identity by showcasing real skills: teamwork, problem-solving, creativity, physical craft, artistic expression, and public speaking.
Evidencing skills through play builds the portfolio no algorithm can replicate.
“Music is Language, Language is Music”
— Karen Ellis, “the orchestrator”
Cite the K12PlayGround.com™
https://K12PlayGround.com