Digital media used in a Montessori way
Maria Montessori was an extremely modern educator in her time and always promoted pioneering methods. Already some 70 years ago she wrote: “I believe… that the introduction of technical aids will generally be a necessity in the schools of the future”.
The students at IMS can now draw on even more extensive technical equipment at their school to creatively work out new content together. Captured here are two working groups on the topic of “Allegories”. Together and in German and English, our students discovered the meaning of the images chosen by class teacher Ms McEvoy.
The enjoyment in class is underpinned by an extensive media concept. Quoting from it: “When we introduce digital tools with a clear anchor in our pedagogy, children are given more opportunities to explore the world through their use. They learn about their everyday reality in a more authentic and rich way.”
Pupils acquire media competence by means of the following competence areas from the Berlin framework curriculum: Informing, Communicating, Presenting, Producing, Analysing and Reflecting.
Overall, there is an opportunity to give students more responsibility for shaping their own learning and thus to promote their independence. More open tasks can be offered, which in turn enable individual learning and promote the intrinsic learning motivation of the students. Furthermore, we support active participation in lesson design, as children can develop their own learning materials and peer-to-peer learning is also developed. This again is one of the basic principles of Maria Montessori’s work and so it can be even more successful to develop the cross-age approach.
The next phase of commissioning investments from the Digital Pact at IMS is now complete. The project began with the network expansion throughout the school. Repeaters now grant full access to WLAN in every corner of the listed building. The Child-safe server ensures that only desired content is accessible. When learning from home is necessary, we can temporarily equip individual students with mobile devices. Professional beamers now facilitate the sharing of visual learning content. Additional student notebooks expand the technical equipment for the higher grade level. A colour laser printer, a 3D printer and Promethean Smart Boards are now used by teachers and the students for interactive learning of modern learning content. We plan to put more i-pads and notebooks into operation in the third stage of the Digitalpakt funding. In this way, learning at the International Montessori School remains lively and attractive.
