In recent years, educators have embraced the transformative potential of technology as research from psychologists and neuroscientists has revealed what proponents of progressive pedagogy have long emphasized. One of the foremost educators in the 20th century, John Dewey, described progressive schools as learning environments that nurture and cultivate individuality, encourage free activity, help children learn through experience and open up children to a dynamic, ever-changing world. 

As we look ahead as a school community firmly rooted in this progressive tradition, yet eager to adapt to the explosion of digital innovation, a fundamental question emerges: How do schools and teachers square the most important aspects of learning – building, exploring, questioning, analyzing, thinking critically, innovating – with 21st century tools?

Let me explain by offering an example from my days at a Montessori school in New York City. I asked my language arts students to compose a musical score for a scene in Harry Potter using the GarageBand app on the iPad. First, I modeled aspects of the app. As I began to demonstrate a few ways to “play” the various instruments, the students immediately lost interest in my explanation and began investigating the tool independently. I soon realized that simply giving students unstructured time to explore and tinker with the app helped them gain new insights into the potential of the app as well as connect to the book in interesting ways. Students took the activity far beyond what I had originally envisioned.

Their level of engagement and depth of thinking was incredible. The digital tool deepened their understanding of the literature because kids began carefully re-reading the book and their annotations to find the perfect moment that would highlight the right note of drama or terror or levity. Students recorded dialogue numerous times, which helped improve fluency, articulation and pace. 

Ingenuity emerged immediately. One group placed their iPad near the classroom door to record its swoosh and creak. Students worked collaboratively, with focus and energy, motivated entirely by their own interests, passions and understandings rather than my external prodding.

Crucially, the audience for their work widened: their ideas were not meant for the teacher alone, but now their work could be easily shared with their peers and families. Students with different learning styles as well as English language learners benefit tremendously when their tool of communication is not just the written word, but voice and audio. The GarageBand app itself differentiates musical abilities, and all students, with or without a music background, can compose their own soundtracks.

The lasting impression I have from this activity has little to do with the technology. Rather, it showed how students were intrinsically motivated to think more deeply about the text through multimedia. It revealed much about strengths and weaknesses as readers and communicators, as well as offered an outlet for creative expression and collaborative problem solving through small group work.

One of the most important questions for teachers is not necessarily what students learn but how they learn. Tony Wagner is one of many education researchers who emphasizes the ongoing importance of investigation and inquiry in school. Students learn most and best by actively constructing meaning each day: they question, interpret, confuse, connect, rethink and revise. Given carefully chosen tools, including online resources and digital technology, students will explore and hypothesize on their own, testing out theories and ideas as part of their own discovery process. 

No invention changes the simple truth that teaching remains, in its essence, a relational art. Yet my experiences support a broader role for technology in the classroom. If teachers maintain a commitment to sound pedagogical principles and design activities that involve discussion, collaboration and critical thinking, students can build their own understanding through active work and engagement with real world issues.