Social Justice: Technology Trumps Teaching?

My headline stems from my reading of the article on social justice at school by Colleen Swain and David Edyburn. In it they use language that suggests teaching as subordinate to technological instruction as a means of providing students access across gender and cultural lines. They create an argument where technology, not the educator, actuates success or overcomes barriers and impediments. The teacher rates relegated to the background as a facilitator who passively accepts technological instruction and plugs-in students to their lesson. I may have read this article incorrectly, but I cannot find an area in where they point to teachers creating and engaging students via technology.

On the other hand, Christine Greenhow's article about the assumptions of students technology saavy generates a educational theory based on vigilante interaction between student and teacher in tandem with technology. She posits a classroom from a student-centered perspective of underdeveloped skills and untapped technology. She shows that students maybe spending a lot of time on the computer no matter where they live, but they are not getting the training to mine this technology to its richest depth. She writes that student want to learn more about the technology, and not simply sat in front of it to display some semblance of social justice.

I think educators tend to view technology as an individual tool. We think that when students use a computer to access their lesson, then we should disengage and encourage the student develop their computer skills independently. However, students view technology as a social tool. They see the computer as a portal to every door on the face of the earth and into the cosmos. There isn't an thing or person they cannot access. As educators we need to provide a relationship and a challenge to this philosophy. We need to challenge students to relate with us, so that they have a portal to their education that they can access both in and out of the classroom. I believe the more opportunities we allow students to access their lessons through multiple technology, then they will seek more from themselves. When a youth believes they can do more than what they have been told, then they are seeking social justice.

Gaming in Class: Schrodinger's Cat

I cannot decide if I think video games should be used in schools. I agree with Mr. Gee that video games cultivate engagement in the game of subject. However, my concern with the incorporation of games in the classroom, or instead of the classroom stems from the non-human interaction games encourage. When I talk with students in the Portland area about their performance in the classroom they use the same language that they use when describing a challenge or enemy in a video game. Although, when you make the correlation between their academic difficulty and their gaming strategy they display confusion and reticence to transfer platforms. I feel that the virtual or simulacral word of video games further divests and distorts the real-world learning platform presented by formal education, which has its own issues as presented by Mr. Gee in the video, but as future teacher and a current student advocate, I believe video games must take a backseat to real-world education.

Admittedly, as I stated above, I agree with Mr. Gee's analysis of video game attributes for education. I think that educational theory could learn a lot from video game's ability to encourage, what Mr. Gee terms "Identity", "Production", and "Risk Taking". As a teacher I aspire to inspire my students to perform their work as the role or identity of the subject. I think that students gain more through experiential education instead of linear education where the content informs the application. The students should imbibe the persona of the information from the narrative perspective of the people involved. As in the gaming format I would support the students through a peformative or mock experience of the content. Therefore, they are able to produce or reproduce the vignette, motives, culture, crisis, and options that brought about the initial outcome. Through this performative method the student then could take risks not thought of by the original characters and produce an outcome from which they could assess the original for its flaws and benefits. This process provides the student with the collaborative passion community aspects the Mr. Gee promotes in the video and his paper. Moreover, where gaming puts the student in a seat and transports them to another world through a limited identity, performative teaching denies the seat and incorporates the extended identity of historical+fantastical identity. The student do not have to deny their limited real capacity or conform to the virtual artificially limited capacity, but embody all aspects of their identity with those of the characters they inhabit. The questions become less about how to advance through the game, and more about how to advance complexity of human intelligence through re-imagined critical situations.

I support the idea that video games are a great way to acquire strategic skills of troubleshooting, but we have to remember that these virtual environments are cognitively rich, but practically and socially irrelevant and scarce if not reiterated in the classroom. Maybe I do believe video games deserve a place in the classroom, but let's look at the creativity and professionalism of teacher before ablate more of their responsibilities with video games.