Fast Company

I am reading an article in the April issue of Fast Company magazine called "A is for App." The main idea is that mobile technology such as the iphone, small handheld computers, can revolutionize education and provide a possible fix to our current education problems.

The article is very interesting and gives strong evidence to support the claims. Students in Chicago schools are improving their reading and math scores. Students in Mexico are able to be exposed to learning that they never had a chance to be exposed to before. Of course their are huge question marks and potential pitfalls. The thing that stood out to me the most in this article was a common thread that ran through the whole thing.

"...it does present the tantalizing prospect of revolutionizing how children are educated by drawing on their innate hunger to seize learning with both hands and push all the right buttons."

"...we encourage teachers not to do any pretraining. Pass the devices out, turn them on, and let the kids figure them out."

"...in Baja, I watch children aged 6 to 12 pick the machine up and within a few minutes, with no direct instructions, they're working in groups of three, helping one another figure out the menus by trial and error."

"Why does education have need to be so structured? What are we afraid of?"

So, what are we afraid of? This thread of creating an environment and allowing students to engage it, mostly on their terms, is one of the core essentials in the Montessori method. Allowing students to concretely "get their hands" on their learning is the foundation of Montessori. The logic being used to support the use of these handhelds in the classroom is the same logic that started the Montessori method over 100 years ago.

"This idea imagines a new role for teachers...the main transformational change that needs to happen is for the teacher to transform from the purveyor of information to the coach."

Teachers, called directors or directresses have been doing this in Montessori classrooms around the world for a very long time.

Why do these ideas seem so new? Why don't more people know about the Montessori method and when will they?

One of the concluding points in the article may help provide an answer.

"A system built around tools that allow children to explore and figure things out for themselves would be radical for most developing-world schools, which emphasize learning by rote. In the United States, which is currently in love with the state curriculum benchmarks and standardized tests, it could be just as hard a sell."

It's time for that romance to end.