During the late 1980's to early 1990's, before the Internet was available to many private citizens, there was another network, a hobbyist's network, called FidoNET. (While FidoNET is still in existence today, it is much less active than it was in its heyday.)

At that time, FidoNET was an extremely active discussion network, hosting many "conferences", or discussion fora. One of the conferences, called EDUCATOR, was a forum for teachers to discuss issues related to their job. During the summer of 1990, some educators who had met on-line, conceived of and founded K12NET, a network for and about education in grades K-12. For more information about the early beginnings of K12NET and the early history of the FidoNET distribution system, visit http://www.ggw.org/freenet/k/K12Net/.

K12NET was distributed through the FidoNET distribution system from 1990 until about 1999. The k12.* hierarchy were created in 1991 and somewhere around 1992/1993 there was a gateway put in place between the Usenet k12.* hierarchy of newsgroups and the K12NET "conferences" distributed through FidoNET. This gateway remained in place until about 1995, allowing discussion and interaction to procede between persons accessing the forums via FidoNET and those accessing the forums through Usenet.

At the time that the k12.* newsgroups were created, the persons who created the groups did not believe they would be able to find moderators for the groups, and they did not feel moderation would be necessary. Not many people had Internet access at that time, and spam and flaming was not so widespread. Most people who had access to the Internet followed standard netiquette. As time went by, and more people gained Internet access, off-topic and inappropriate discussions became more common in the k12.* newsgroups. It was felt that school children could not be exposed to unmoderated Usenet newsgroups, and the gateway between the Usenet k12.* groups and the K12NET FidoNET conferences was shut down in 1995. It was thought that the gateway would some day be re-established, if moderators for the k12.* newsgroups could be found.

In the meantime, traffic in the K12NET FidoNET conferences began to decline. More and more people and schools were gaining access to the Internet, which was faster, and in some cases less expensive, than FidoNET distribution. Some participants in K12NET thought that re-establishing the gateway between the Usenet k12.* groups and the K12NET FidoNET conferences could revitalize dying discussion fora on the FidoNET side. However, some K12NET System Operators were unwilling to put such a gateway in place unless the Usenet groups were moderated. They did not want to expose the school children who used the K12NET conferences to any risks or inappropriate material.

Finally in the summer of 1997, an experiment was agreed upon. One newsgroup would be converted to moderated status and gated to the corresponding K12NET FidoNET conference. This would be a test case, and if all went well, other groups might later follow. A volunteer was found to moderate the k12.ed.math newsgroup. While this experiment had a few difficulties, overall it was a success. But it didn't really "rejuvenate" the discussions in K12NET's K12_MATH_ED conference. And volunteer moderators for other newsgroups seemed impossible to locate. At one point it seemed, in the summer of 1998, like a volunteer had been located to moderate k12.chat.junior, but in the end that fell through.

There was also a problem with maintaining a gateway between the k12.* newsgroups and the K12NET FidoNET conferences. In 1998 the gateway went down, never to be reconnected. About a year later, the FidoNET side of K12NET collapsed, due to lack of participation.

Now all that remains of K12NET is the k12.* hierarchy of newsgroups on Usenet.