Thing #13

I chose to watch Steven Kimmi’s presentation “Traveling through the Dark.”  His presentation appealed to me because it focused on beginning to incoporate technology into the classroom.  He is also a fifth grade teacher, which is so close to the 6th grade level I teach.  I feel like I am certainly a beginner at all of this, so I was interested to hear what he had to say.

His presentation began by describing William Stafford’s poem Traveing Through the Dark, where a man comes upon a pregnant deer while driving along a dark, narrow road.  He must decide whether to push the heap into the valley and keep driving or attempt to birth the fawn, which still lives in the dead mother’s womb.  Kimmi relates the man’s tough decision to the one all educators must make when presented with the wealth of technological opportunities out there.

He argues that ignoring the technology and choosing to teach the way we always have has terrible implications.  We will create a generation of students who are unprepared for their future.  Our students will be disengaged in the classroom.  And, education will become irrelevant to our society.  Obviously we don’t want any of those things!  So, he goes forward to suggest what we should do about all of this.

Kimmi had an aha moment during a recent spring break from school.  He felt as though his students were not engaged in his lessons, and he felt he was to blame for their disinterest in his lessons.  So, he self-prescribed some professional development.  In the year that followed, he began blogging and experimenting with other technologies.  He talked about the ways he has incorporated them into his own classroom.

He uses video in math class.  While he was very vague in describing how he accomplishes this, he did say that he and his students use video to “go over math skills” they will need by the end of the year.  He also mentioned podcasting, suggesting that is the easiest place to start.  Cell phones can be used to podcast nowadays, so he pulls his students aside one-by-one to record their portions of podcasts during class.  He emphasized the importance of establishing a support group, and he suggested trying edtechtalk.com and teachers teaching teachers.  I see this Web 2.0 family as a kind of support group.

I was disappointed that Kimmi did not give more solid examples of how he incorporates technology into his classroom so I could borrow some of his ideas.  I was pleased, however, to hear from someone who was so recently at the very same place along this journey as I am.  And, I enjoyed seeing the passion he has for what he does.  If we all had that passion and the desire to do the best for our students, the educational world would be a whole lot better off than it is.