Technology as Learning Partner

We're firm believers in the transformative power of technology. But you wouldn't guess that if you spent a day at Comini. There are no iPads in children's hands. No kids staring at smartboards. Screen time is limited, and when we do show the occasional documentary, it's rare and intentional. So how can we say we're pro-technology?

Because we don't use it on the children. We use it for the children.

The screen time debate never ends. Research shows passive content consumption does nothing for learning. But we're missing something profound about what the internet has created. It hasn't just changed how we use screens. It's transformed them into two distinct things: tools we can wield and worlds we can enter.

When a child uses a drawing app to create art, or codes a simple game, or writes a story, the screen becomes a tool. It serves their creativity. But when they scroll through social media or watch endless videos, they've entered a world designed by others. A world engineered to be more engaging than anything humans have encountered before.

Social media platforms have perfected the art of capturing attention. They deliver precisely timed hits of dopamine that keep us scrolling, watching, clicking. Adults struggle to resist. Children don't stand a chance. Their brains, still developing the capacity for impulse control, are particularly vulnerable to these engineered feedback loops.

This raises deep questions about freedom and autonomy. The classic ideals of letting children choose their own path assume a natural world where choices reflect genuine interests. But in digital worlds

crafted to maximize engagement, are children really choosing? Or are algorithms choosing for them?

We must rethink our assumptions about freedom when the playground has changed so dramatically. Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation explores this territory wonderfully, documenting how this new world affects young minds and what we can do about it.

At Comini, we distinguish carefully between screens as tools and screens as worlds. We embrace technology that empowers creation: recording stories, making art, coding simple programs, researching genuine questions. These uses build skills and express individual creativity.

But we protect children from digital worlds designed to capture and hold attention. Not because we're anti-technology, but because we understand its power. Just as we wouldn't let children wander unsupervised through a casino, we don't let them explore alone in spaces engineered to exploit their psychological vulnerabilities.

This conscious approach means children experience technology's benefits without drowning in its designed distractions. They learn to use screens purposefully rather than being used by them. In a world where digital engagement is inevitable, this may be the most valuable skill we can nurture: knowing when screens serve us and when they seduce us.

The tools will keep evolving. The worlds will become more immersive. Our job remains constant: helping children develop the judgment to navigate both wisely.

So what do we use technology for? Specifically, we use it to strengthen what matters most: the human connection between child and facilitator. That living, breathing relationship we call the human loop. Multiply the number of children with the number of facilitators and that's the network we're nurturing. Even with just 25 children, that's over a hundred relationships we pay attention to. And these aren't static connections. They shift with emotion, interest, growth, setbacks, and breakthroughs.

In conventional schools, there is no such loop. There's one broadcast: teacher to class. It follows a schedule set months in advance. Children sit facing forward while predetermined curriculum marches on. No time to pause, re-route, or notice if the passengers are even on board. Not for us.

For us, that loop is everything. But it means enormous invisible work. We plan based on emerging interests. We track patterns. We revisit emotional and cognitive shifts. We reflect constantly. This allows the learning journey to stay alive and responsive. It's also why alternative schools, despite being around for more than a century, rarely scale. The human effort required to hold such complexity is immense.

Here's the irony: conventional education has deeply inefficient learning but extremely efficient systems. Timetables, grading software, tracking dashboards, lesson banks. You can slot any teacher into any classroom and the machine churns on. Not well, but it moves.

We've chosen something more meaningful. And it demands better tools to support it.

Imagine planning an expedition where every traveler is at a different altitude, carrying different gear, and heading toward a slightly different peak. That's what guiding learning feels like. And we're not just planning the path. We're watching how each traveler responds, when they detour, where they stumble, what catches their eye.

All of this happens through observation. Not formal tests, but real, rich, present-moment attention. What did a child return to every day this week? What kind of questions are surfacing in group discussions? Where is new confidence emerging? Or frustration?

None of this should be lost. This is the real data of learning. But holding it all in our heads quickly becomes unmanageable.

That's where technology enters.

Last month, Riya spent three days building an elaborate pulley system to lift small objects from the floor. She sketched ideas, tested different materials, adjusted for friction, and eventually created a working mechanism that delighted younger children. Throughout this process, not a single screen was involved.

Yet technology was essential to what happened next.

That evening, our facilitator captured Riya's process in our digital documentation system. She noted Riya's persistence, her methodical testing, her application of knowledge from a previous exploration of simple machines. She uploaded photos of the different iterations and transcribed Riya's explanations of what worked and didn't.

Later that week, during our planning session, this documentation helped our team recognize an emerging interest in mechanical systems across several children. This led to setting up a new exploration area with additional materials for building and testing such systems.

This is technology at its best: invisible yet powerful, supporting human relationships rather than replacing them.

We've built a digital assistant we call Zippie to make this work visible, connected, and actionable. Zippie doesn't tell us what to teach. It helps us remember what matters. It helps us see across time, across interactions, across children and facilitators, so the loop becomes not only more resilient, but more deeply informed.

Zippie is not a chatbot. It doesn't hand out worksheets. It doesn't score answers. What it does is something far more subtle and powerful.

Let's say a facilitator notices a child fascinated by sorting buttons by size, color, texture. She makes a quick note: "Kabir spent 25 minutes sorting buttons. Switched strategies halfway from color to size." That single note might seem small. But when added to a growing record of similar moments—pattern work with beads last week, lining leaves into gradients of green the week before—Zippie surfaces a thread.

Now imagine this multiplied across children, weeks, themes. Zippie helps us zoom in and zoom out. To spot emerging curiosities and dormant interests. To see when confidence is rising or when a child circles around something but can't quite break through. Over time, it becomes a rich, living story of learning journeys that matter far more than report cards or test scores.

But Zippie is also a mirror for us as facilitators. It helps us reflect: Have we proposed enough invitations in the arts this month? Have we responded to the emotional cues a child is offering? Are we building on previous projects or starting from scratch too often?

In this way, technology becomes not just an assistant but a partner in growth—for children and adults alike.

This isn't automation. It's amplification.

The school we've built doesn't just need different beliefs. It needs different infrastructure.

Planning here is a daily act of creativity. Not a script we follow, but a hypothesis we refine. We propose ideas based on observation. We adapt them based on response. We reflect as a team to deepen learning. Then we begin again.

Zippie supports all of this. It helps us:

Observe: Collecting and tagging learning moments, emotional shifts, peer interactions.

Propose: Surfacing opportunities based on past patterns or shared interests.

Reflect: Making visible what's lost in daily activity's swirl.

Adapt: Helping us notice when something isn't working and nudging us to try differently.

This rich learning moment might have vanished into memory without our digital documentation system. Instead, the facilitator quickly captured Maya's observations, questions, and connections. She added photos of Maya's drawing alongside the actual caterpillar. She noted Maya's growing vocabulary around metamorphosis and her emerging understanding of life cycles.

This documentation didn't just preserve the moment. It transformed it into a valuable resource that helped our team understand Maya's interests and thinking patterns, created a record of her development over time, informed our planning for future explorations, provided material for meaningful communication with her family, and became part of a collection Maya herself could review, reinforcing her identity as scientist and observer.

Without technology, this level of detailed documentation would be practically impossible. The labor of handwriting notes, organizing physical photos, and sharing information across our team would overwhelm capacity. Technology makes visible what might remain hidden: the complex, interconnected nature of children's learning.

AI is changing the world around us. But instead of handing it over to children or racing to adopt the newest app, we’ve asked a simpler question: Can it help us become more human?

When used well, AI doesn't replace educators. It strengthens our ability to observe, respond, and design with care. And to be more present. Just as Zippie helps connect dots across time and children, we use AI behind the scenes to create learning materials reflecting each child's interests and readiness without compromising real experiences.

We’ve designed our own card game, Story Snitch, where kids create wild stories using visual and word prompts.  They laugh, compete, and collaborate while growing into confident readers and storytellers. In math, we've built playful workbooks embedding numeracy into narrative, inviting children to solve problems because they care about the characters, not because it's page 27 in the syllabus.

Sometimes, targeted practice needs adaptive tools. If a child is stuck on a particular skill, a simple digital sequence can offer just the right challenge quietly and respectfully. But even then, it's only part of the whole picture. Screens don't replace hands-on projects, group discussions, or the joy of figuring something out with a friend.

This amplification lets us hold more complexity with less overwhelm. It helps us see a little further, listen a little deeper, plan a little better. But the heart of learning remains the same: a relationship, a question, a moment of meaning. That’s what we build for. That’s what we protect.

It's worth saying this clearly: Our children will grow up in a digital world. They already are.

But that doesn't mean early exposure is the same as preparation. Giving a toddler a tablet is not preparing them for a digital future. Teaching them how to think clearly, observe deeply, question meaningfully, and create with intention—those are the skills that matter.

And for that, they need space. They need people. They need slowness and depth.

Later, they'll learn to code, to compose digital music, to build websites or train models. Some already do, outside of Comini hours. What we're building now is the foundation that will shape how they approach that world.

Eight year old Vikram was always eager to use technology. When we started to categorize the books in our library, he enthusiastically volunteered to categorize and input the books on a spreadsheet. This project involved digital literacy skills – searching for reliable information, organizing content, basic layout design – but these were in service of his genuine interest and built upon his already-developed observational abilities and love for categorizing and sorting things.

Will they use technology mindlessly or mindfully? Will they seek quick answers or ask better questions? Will they create or merely consume?

Our job is not to teach tools. Tools change. Our job is to cultivate the kind of learner who can use any tool wisely.

And for that, we're grateful to have technology on the side. Behind the scenes. Holding the loops that hold the children.