The project team met today in Maribor, at the Anton Martin Slomšek Institute. First, we visited a kindergarten and a primary school, where we were introduced to the concept of teaching with materials as conceived by Maria Montessori.

This was followed by an intensive work meeting to review the goals that have been set. We had already been able to tick off many of them: there is already a lot of materials on this site, and we have already trained and hopefully inspired many teachers to use them. In the coming year, we will be touring schools (even more) to see how students get on with it, but most of all, we have been thinking about where to publish the results, and how to introduce the project to as many new teachers as possible. Hopefully, you’ll be able to see us at this year’s Digdaktika and DUH, and next year’s NAK, among others.

The visit was not only an overview of the work on the project, but also an opportunity to plan further cooperation on similar projects. The experience with Surnames shows that teachers may need additional help. Could OIDs be trained to do this? How about this: could materials inspired bt Montessori pedagogy also be developed for artificial intelligence and, more generally, algorithmic thinking?

Finally, two young students showed us a humanoid robot they are developing to serve as a teaching prop. Among other things, the robot can talk, and they have already taught it to dance.

At the end of the meeting, the T-shirts were handed out. :)