Montessori Meets Artificial Intelligence

Who is responding to the interview (include name and position)? Marcela Sepúlveda, Director and co-founder of Open Montessori (Chile).

What is your professional background? I studied psychology and I am an entrepreneur.

Which came first, Open Montessori or Montessori Mentor? Open Montessori was established first in 2021 as an online educational institution during the pandemic to offer an educational alternative that respected Montessori principles in a virtual format. Subsequently, we identified the need for a continuous support digital tool for both guides and families, which led to the creation of Montessori Mentor.

Please tell us about Open Montessori. Open Montessori is an online educational project that applies the principles of the Montessori methodology for children aged 3 to 12 years. Our approach allows children to learn with live remote classes taught by specialized guides in small groups. We stand out for offering a welcoming educational environment that promotes independence, self-discipline, and a love for learning, with individualized follow-up for each child. We send Montessori materials to families depending on their level, such as the Pink Tower, the Movable Alphabet, the Decimal System, Circular Fractions, the Long Division, or the Chessboard. Additionally, we have a digital environment with hundreds of contents created by the Guides with the support of Lorena Sepúlveda (co-founder and Director of Content at OM) to complement the classes and provide graphic, interactive, or audiovisual material for each student to work on their personal plan at home, which we call the “OM Environment”. In this, the Guides can track the progress of each child according to their interests and development level. Our purpose is to bring the Montessori methodology and philosophy to as many families as possible, without geographical location being a limitation to receiving a quality education.

At Open Montessori, we integrate crucial soft skills for the future. We encourage teamwork, creativity, and problem-solving in our students. We recognize that computer tools and automation are changing the future landscape, so we prepare children to face these challenges by developing unique human skills and ethical values. Thus, we ensure a comprehensive education that not only focuses on knowledge but also on forming individuals with essential life competencies.

How was Montessori Mentor developed? Montessori Mentor was developed in response to the need for continuous support and accessible resources for Montessori educators and families from our OM educational project. Our technical director, Daniel Atik, specialized in development and advanced AI technology, created this specialized assistant using the latest LLMs and the most advanced RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) techniques and other “fine-tuning” techniques to feed extra knowledge into the AI models, combining Montessori philosophy knowledge with specific knowledge related to sequences and other educational contents to offer the best answers. Ultimately, he created this chat, which is still in its Beta version today, using the best LLMs and adding a large amount of extra specialized knowledge in everything related to Montessori.

What problem(s) does Montessori Mentor solve? Montessori Mentor addresses several key needs for Montessori parents and Guides. This AI-powered chatbot offers personalized support for implementing Montessori principles at home and in the educational environment. It provides advice on Montessori activities, classroom management, and positive discipline strategies, tailored to the individual needs of each child, facilitating the creation of learning environments that promote independence and a love for learning. Additionally, it allows us to disseminate information about the benefits of the philosophy and methodology and the history of how the foundations of Montessori were conceived.

How does Montessori Mentor work? Montessori Mentor is a chat that uses the latest technology in Large Language Models (LLM) and has been trained with manuals and various contents on the Montessori methodology and philosophy, as well as with its own training (fine-tuning), so that anyone can consult any topic they wish and it will act as a support guide for both Montessori Guides and parents interested in using the methodology in specific cases.

Before starting, Montessori Mentor will ask you if you are a Montessori Guide or if you are a parent, as well as the age of your child, to be able to adapt the response or the necessary questions more precisely to reach the best answer.

What has user data taught your team about general Montessori knowledge, demand, or even misconceptions? User data has shown us great interest and demand for Montessori education and philosophy applied to all areas of life, not just education. As for misconceptions, many people think that the Montessori method is only for preschoolers. Montessori Mentor has also helped us and helps others in all the communicational aspects to generate content for social media.

What is your team currently learning the most? Our team is constantly observing, seeking the best ways to educate at home, faithful to the Montessori philosophy, adding technological tools to the concrete experience of the Montessori methodology.

What have been some surprises along the way? At first, we discovered that Large Language Models (LLM) could say incorrect things if they did not have the proper context loaded correctly. It was a lot of trial and error and a lot of learning to adopt the best ways to train LLMs and get better responses. It is something we continue to build day by day, adding new content that we believe is relevant and improving specific learning to get better results.

Regarding our online project OM, we also discovered that there is a great demand from families who decided to educate at home for various reasons. For example, seeking a bully-free environment, personalized education that adapts to specific needs, the possibility of traveling without missing classes, not losing the affective connection in the family nucleus, having an alternative education more aligned with living in a geographic location that does not have many educational options, among others. More and more families are working from home and want to participate in their children’s education.

What is next for Montessori Mentor? For Montessori Mentor, we want to connect more with users to better understand their specific needs and see how to integrate more interactive resources, adapting the content for different educational levels and cultural contexts, and continue improving the knowledge and response capabilities of the platform.

What do you hope users gain from using Montessori Mentor? We hope that Montessori Mentor users gain the tools to implement and practice the Montessori methodology and that it serves as a support that inspires and guides them both at home and in the classroom.

How can MontessoriPost.com readers learn more?

MontessoriPost.com readers can visit our website Open Montessori (https://openmontessori.cl) and interact on our Montessori Mentor platform (https://montessorimentor.ai). We also invite them to follow us on our Instagram @openmontessori.cl, and check out our intro video: https://youtu.be/VfTk0lKItSw