Frequently Asked Questions

Below are answers to many of the commonly asked questions about Montessori Live and the functionings of the website. If you cannot find your answer here, please contact our sales or support teams.
General Information	Video Issues	Software Recommendations

General Information

Q:Are group memberships available for my entire school?

A:Yes. Montessori Live will create a custom package for your school provided you have a minimum of 5 educators.

Q:Can these courses be taken at your own rate/speed? Or can you only sign up for a course at a particular time?

A:The courses are only offered at set times because of the need for interactive chats and forum discussions with cohorts. While there is a basic timeline for the courses, the participants still work at their own pace.
    Most of the assignments have deadlines but there are only a couple of times when participants are required to be online at the same time. This is during the chat sessions.

Q: Can I participate in Montessori Live if I do not live in the United States?

A: Montessori Live has been created with this in mind. We recognize that there are many schools all over the world that are far from quality teacher training programs. Our program will provide a high quality teacher-training program so that your staff will not have to travel across the world to benefit from Montessori training. Montessori Live has been developed for schools like yours, in particular.

Q: Are these courses recognized by universities?

A: Not yet, but they will be soon. Montessori Live is working with a company called Knowledge Delivery Systems that has courses accredited by many universities, including:

1. Nova Southeastern University
2. Lake Erie College
3. Adams State College
4. Immaculata University
5. Central Washington University
6. College of New Jersey
7. Ocean County College
8. Camden County College
9. Raritan County College
10. University of Detroit
11. Argosy University
12. Keene State College

Q: Is there an extra charge for this ?

A: Yes, Montessori courses for graduate credit will cost closer to $600 per course. Participants will receive 3 graduate credits from the above universities for participating in our courses through KDS.

Q: When will this be available?

A: By September of 2007 or earlier

Q: Can I get Montessori certification through this program?

A: Montessori professional organizations do not yet recognize online education. Montessori Live will be developing a face-to-face component for our training programs in order to provide Montessori credentials for those seeking Montessori teacher certification.

Q: Can I get professional development credit through this program?

A: Montessori Live will issue all participants our certificate of completion. Participants will need to take this to their district in order to qualify for professional development credits.

Q: Why do these course cost money?

A: The Internet is has many expenses associated with hosting sites. Plus, many people are required to produce these videos. So far, Island Village Montessori School has borne the costs associated with creating and maintaining this online program of teacher training. The program began with the help of a Dissemination Grant from the State of Florida. However, the grant was for two years.

    IVMS is now on its own to make sure this project can become self-sustaining. Plus, we feel strongly that our courses need a live instructor as a guide rather than a completely self-paced course as in some online instruction models. For all of these reasons, Montessori Live cannot be free. We pledge to keep our prices as low as possible to promote the Montessori pedagogy and philosophy of education.

Video Issues

Q: Why do I get nothing but a question mark in the video when I click on the link to it?

A: There is a couple of possibilities for this. The first may be that you do not have QuickTime installed on your computer or that it is not the most recent version of QuickTime. You may download the latest version of QuickTime below.

QuickTime 7 for Mac

QuickTime 7 for Windows

     The other reason you may be seeing the question mark is from time to time when the other media players installed on your PC get registered to take over handling some of the file formats used by QuickTime video-playing software for Windows .

     To review the settings, click on Start and Control Panel and then look for the big, blue Q icon for QuickTime. Open the QuickTime control panel and open the tab for File Types. Be sure that your file associations are set for QuickTime movies. Check that other settings and file associations do not conflict with the file associations in your other players.

     In Windows media player these are found by opening the application and choosing the "Tools" button on the top menu. From the window that pops up choose the tab labeled "File Types" and compare them to that of QuickTime.

Q: I can hear the video but I cannot see it. Why is this?

A: Most often the problem of having sound but no picture in a QuickTime video is on a Windows based machine running XP operating system. A Microsoft update for Internet Explorer 6 that changed the way the browser loads embedded ActiveX controls.

Major ActiveX controls include:

Adobe Reader
Apple QuickTime Player
Microsoft Windows Media Player
Real Networks RealPlayer
Sun Java Virtual Machine

The modification comes as part of an ongoing patent dispute with Eolas Technology and the University of California.

The simplest solution for this problem is to simply click on the video and it will appear. If you get tired of clicking on videos each time you wish to view one, the fix for this issue (released by Microsoft) can be found below.

Please note - any system changes or problems encountered as a result of this patch are at your own risk. We in no way take responsibility for any damage or security violation.

Download the Fix for your Windows Version

Compatibility Patch for Internet Explorer for XP SP2
Download the 917425 package now.

Compatibility Patch for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 2003 SP1
Download the 917425 package now.

Compatibility Patch for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 2003 SP1, Itanium-based versions
Download the 917425 package now.

Compatibility Patch for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 2003, x64-based versions
Download the 917425 package now.

Compatibility Patch for Internet Explorer for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Download the 917425 package now.

For more info go to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/917425

Software Recommendations

Browser Compatability

Windows Users - It is highly recomended that you use IE6 or Firefox browsers while using this website. Many features on Montessori Live are NOT compatable with IE7. We are working on fixing what Microsoft broke.

Mac Users - It is highly recommended that you use Firefox browser while using this website. Many features on Montessori Live are NOT compatable with Safari browser and the courses section of Montessori Live is virtually inaccessible on IE for Mac.

Get Firefox here

Throughout this web site there are two major pieces of software that you will need to have installed on your computer for complete functionality.

All of the forms and documents that are available for either viewing or download use Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).To view these documents you will need the most recent version of Adobe Acrobat Reader.

You may download the software for free.

Acrobat Reader for MacIntosh

Acrobat Reader for Windows

Acrobat Reader for Unix

All of the movies in the Video Library are formatted with Apple's QuickTime .mov format. Both Mac and Windows Users will need to upgrade to Apple’s QuickTime 7 to play the movies.

You may download the software for free.

QuickTime 7 for Mac

QuickTime 7 for Windows

Attention Mac Users - It is highly recommended that you use Firefox browser while using this website. Many features on Montessori Live are NOT compatable with Safari browser and the courses section of Montessori Live is virtually inaccessible on IE for Mac.