Montessori Software Project

Richard Scheines

Pennsylvania's Link-to-Learn Infrastructure Investment Program has funded a grant that proposes to create web-based educational software for Montessori elementary school students. The Montessori philosophy involves teaching concepts first concretely, then symbolically, and then abstractly. To do this, Montessori classrooms use "manipulatives" like Golden Beads, which involve boxes of beads with compartments for single beads, doubles, triples, etc. The Golden Beads are used to teach multiplication, area, volume, etc. The idea for this project is to build several "virtual manipulatives" which can be accessed from a standard web-browser.

The Homewood Montessori School, an excellent racially balanced magnet elementary school that uses a half public school- half Montessori curriculum will collaborate with us on the project. We will go into the school to do a contextual inquiry and design in late spring, prototype and test manipulatives, implement them in a fully funcitonal web-site this summer, and install and evaluate the software in the fall. The grant includes enough money to completely network the Homewood school and to install 25 PCs. It also has funds for hiring 5-10 students full time for 2 months in the summer. If you want to find out more about the project, you can read the grant proposal that Link-to-Learn accepted. If you are interested in applying to work on the project, please fill out an application, and either email it to me at: R.Scheines@andrew.cmu.edu or drop a physical copy off in my mailbox (Baker Hall 135).