Oftentimes in my classroom, the children relish the opportunity to share their knowledge with one another. This can come in many forms: through storytelling or conversation, taking care to be a positive example, or through direct instruction. In particular, my older students love giving lessons to one another, just as a teacher would present to them! Giving the children opportunities to present lessons to one another not only bolsters their confidence, it is a wonderful community building exercise and a subtle form of assessment to gauge a child's skill with an activity – successfully teaching to a friend can demonstrate mastery of a concept or skill.
In the relatively freeform, mixed-age structure of the Montessori classroom, it is rare for many children to be working on the same thing. This variety allows for a wealth of experiences to be shared among the children – the environment lends itself naturally to children teaching each other! It is with this in mind that I wish to empower students and encourage them to share knowledge with their peers. By their Kindergarten year, students have begun to develop into more social creatures who are interested in each other's doings, and who yearn for a strong sense of ownership and community. My Kindergarten cohort of last school year was an especially large group – eight students, or half the class population! As the academics became more rigorous for these older children, it proved difficult to keep all of them engaged and appropriately challenged by their work. To add to that, their increased sociability, while perfectly natural for their age, could sometimes become a distraction.
When reading Alan November's description of students as tutorial designers, I immediately thought of my 6 year olds, and how they would probably love the chance to repurpose their prior knowledge in such a way. I am sure they would be intrigued by the idea of teaching not just their close peers, but possibly children all over the world! The very visual, modeling-centric nature of many Montessori lessons could fit well into a video format. With this in mind, I believe QuickTime Player could be a helpful resource in encouraging children to make their own tutorials/lessons. This application is pre-installed on MacOS devices, but can also be downloaded for other operating systems. While it is most often used as a media player, QuickTime also provides an easy interface for recording video or audio from your computer's built-in webcam and microphone.
I envision some explanation being needed before this activity is rolled out – maybe a discussion about Montessori schools existing all over the world, or about how their knowledge can be saved and used to help others. Once the older children are sufficiently fired up about this prospect, they could have the option to show a lesson while being recorded. A device could be positioned across a table or on a rug while they demonstrate an activity (with commentary/explanation optional). With enough takers, there could be a veritable video library of class lessons that our children could seek out when needed.
How is this system of video recording any better than simply sharing with classmates face-to-face? I believe there could be room for both approaches. The QuickTime method may be a point of interest for some children who are intrigued by the idea of being able to share their knowledge long-term, with a tangible recording rather than a transient demonstration. Additionally, it could be a non-disruptive way for these older students to keep tabs on each other, and stay up to date with what everyone is up to. Normally, this takes the form of ignoring one's own work to check up on others; instead, they could see a recent video of a friend's work while leaving their peer undisturbed.
Some potential hurdles arise from this approach, however. The foremost concern is parental permission – some families may not be entirely comfortable with the idea of their child being recorded. With some proactive and well thought-out communication, however, I would hope that families could approve of this process. Some children may also be slightly distracted by knowing the presence of a recording device. However, my hope is that with a bit of familiarity and experience this sensation would quickly go away. Finally, the webcams built into many computers record video in a mirror image, which could make math or language works quite confusing. Luckily, videos can be flipped via an edit menu in the QuickTime app itself. By creating video tutorials of their work, my hope is that students would feel an even stronger sense of pride in their own knowledge, giving them an avenue to share what they know with a potentially limitless number of other students, and feeling that they have somehow added to society's collective knowledge.
In the relatively freeform, mixed-age structure of the Montessori classroom, it is rare for many children to be working on the same thing. This variety allows for a wealth of experiences to be shared among the children – the environment lends itself naturally to children teaching each other! It is with this in mind that I wish to empower students and encourage them to share knowledge with their peers. By their Kindergarten year, students have begun to develop into more social creatures who are interested in each other's doings, and who yearn for a strong sense of ownership and community. My Kindergarten cohort of last school year was an especially large group – eight students, or half the class population! As the academics became more rigorous for these older children, it proved difficult to keep all of them engaged and appropriately challenged by their work. To add to that, their increased sociability, while perfectly natural for their age, could sometimes become a distraction.
When reading Alan November's description of students as tutorial designers, I immediately thought of my 6 year olds, and how they would probably love the chance to repurpose their prior knowledge in such a way. I am sure they would be intrigued by the idea of teaching not just their close peers, but possibly children all over the world! The very visual, modeling-centric nature of many Montessori lessons could fit well into a video format. With this in mind, I believe QuickTime Player could be a helpful resource in encouraging children to make their own tutorials/lessons. This application is pre-installed on MacOS devices, but can also be downloaded for other operating systems. While it is most often used as a media player, QuickTime also provides an easy interface for recording video or audio from your computer's built-in webcam and microphone.
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| QuickTime app icon |
I envision some explanation being needed before this activity is rolled out – maybe a discussion about Montessori schools existing all over the world, or about how their knowledge can be saved and used to help others. Once the older children are sufficiently fired up about this prospect, they could have the option to show a lesson while being recorded. A device could be positioned across a table or on a rug while they demonstrate an activity (with commentary/explanation optional). With enough takers, there could be a veritable video library of class lessons that our children could seek out when needed.
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| New video or audio recordings can be created from the menu bar on MacOS |
How is this system of video recording any better than simply sharing with classmates face-to-face? I believe there could be room for both approaches. The QuickTime method may be a point of interest for some children who are intrigued by the idea of being able to share their knowledge long-term, with a tangible recording rather than a transient demonstration. Additionally, it could be a non-disruptive way for these older students to keep tabs on each other, and stay up to date with what everyone is up to. Normally, this takes the form of ignoring one's own work to check up on others; instead, they could see a recent video of a friend's work while leaving their peer undisturbed.
Some potential hurdles arise from this approach, however. The foremost concern is parental permission – some families may not be entirely comfortable with the idea of their child being recorded. With some proactive and well thought-out communication, however, I would hope that families could approve of this process. Some children may also be slightly distracted by knowing the presence of a recording device. However, my hope is that with a bit of familiarity and experience this sensation would quickly go away. Finally, the webcams built into many computers record video in a mirror image, which could make math or language works quite confusing. Luckily, videos can be flipped via an edit menu in the QuickTime app itself. By creating video tutorials of their work, my hope is that students would feel an even stronger sense of pride in their own knowledge, giving them an avenue to share what they know with a potentially limitless number of other students, and feeling that they have somehow added to society's collective knowledge.
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