Journal 3

"Social Justice: Choice or Necessity?" by Colleen Swain and David Fayburn

The main concept of social justice in the most basic of explanations is the distribution of good and bad amongst people. This concept ties into the system of technology in the sense that the best technology gets distributed to the wealthiest of school districts and the best schools. This unfair balance of technology in our schools gives a real disadvantage to students in low income schools. Students suffer loose out not only on educational opportunities at universities (even the most gifted of students can loose admission to a school for not be technologically fluent), but students also loose out on future employment opportunities that require them to be technologically fluent.

The unfair balance of technology can be examined in the practice of making students share computers at school. Most often, boys get more time on computers, while girls loose out on opportunities to use technology due to the more aggressive nature of the male counterparts.

This article argues that there are ways for technology to become more widespread in low income schools. Open source websites offer free programs such as Microsoft office without infringing on copyright laws. Web explorers such as Firefox are also free to all users. Even deeply discounted computers are offered to schools on websites such as that of Digital Equity Portal and Toolkit.

I agree completely with the authors of this article that technology is unfairly distributed to schools of different income levels. As a current school district employee who has worked in both low income and high income schools, I have seen the effects of social justice, or lack thereof in regards to technology in the classroom. High income schools definitely have an advantage when it comes to technology, which negatively impacts the education of low income students. I think that more should be done to correct this problem.

1) How could I help to improve the social justice effect on technology in the classrooms?
One way that I could help to even out this imbalance is to donate my time to go to different organizations and companies to ask for donations for technology in the classroom. This would not only be an effective means of bringing technology into the room but it could be a fun project that other teachers could get involved in as well.
2) How would I incorporate technology in to my classroom?
Students will use technology to type up reports, as well as take notes from power points. I believe that power point presentations are highly effective tools in the classroom.