Montessori teachers from Bridgewater, Hillsborough create iPad apps for elementary school students
Published: Thursday, January 13, 2011, 10:57 AM Updated: Thursday, January 13, 2011, 11:06 AM BRIDGEWATER — It all started when Grace Kochanik, a co-founder of the Bridgewater firm MontessoriTech, first saw Steve Jobs do a podcast presentation about Apple’s new product — the iPad.
A township resident, Kochanik, who’s also an elementary teacher and technology instructor at Raritan Valley Montessori school, said she began thinking about how her young students could play the fun educational games used at the school on the iPad.
“I don’t know, something clicked in my head,” she said. “one of the materials Maria Montessori created more than 70 years ago was the Stamp Game and I just felt that it should be on the iPad.”
The Stamp Game originally used actual, colorful Victorian-era postage stamps to teach young children basic decimal place value math through the manipulation of physical objects. It then evolved into being played with mosaic tiles and ultimately with the wooden blocks that are being used in Montessori schools today.
Kochanik eventually approached Tamara Mount, an elementary teacher at the Cherry Blossom Montessori School and a resident of Hillsborough, with the idea of creating the Stamp Game iPad application.
The rest, as they say, is history.
For those not familiar with Montessori, it is an alternative method to traditional education based on the teachings of Maria Montessori, an Italian physician and educator. Montessori schools can be found worldwide and throughout the United States.
The method aims to replicate a child’s natural observation process to bring about self-directed learning. Maria Montessori believed children possess unusual sensitivity and ability for absorbing and learning from their surrounding environment.
“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed,” Montessori was known to have said.
Kochanik and Mount officially founded MontessoriTech last year in April and, after working with a developer for six months to bring the Stamp Game application to market, they officially launched it in the iTunes store in November 2010. An application billed as “a prelude to the Stamp Game” and called “Place Value” was launched shortly after.
MontessoriTech’s iPad application is essentially the latest, virtual iteration of the game. It is the first of its kind, and just like the original, it covers addition and subtraction for up to 4-digit numbers.
“our initial marketing focus is on Montessori schools,” said Mount. “But our long-term goal is to get this kind of educational material to traditionally educated students. someone who has an iPad and does not know Montessori can now get exposure to the method.”
The sales figures so far are encouraging, demonstrating the viability of the application in the marketplace. Kochanik and Mount expect a significant rise in numbers once all those moms and dads who received brand new iPads for Christmas start looking for applications.
“We got a real nice five-star review from a mother on the iTunes store who said that our Stamp Game helped her son get over the fear of the actual, physical Stamp Game,” added Kochanik. “That actually hit home because that was our intention. this is virtual material that people can access anywhere without having to worry about purchasing the real-life 3-D pieces — which can cost more than our game for the iPad.”
The two women claim their company is now in the process of expanding its virtual offerings into Montessori language materials, which will be geared toward older kids.
At the heart of any new Montessori products they end up creating will be the mission “to develop applications and curriculum that use technologies to enhance the transition from the concrete to the abstract.”
For more information about MontessoriTech and how to purchase their products at iTunes, visit MontessoriTech.net.
Note to readers: in the interest of full disclosure, please know that Grace Kochanik is the sister of Messenger-Gazette editor Frank Mustac.
