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.