Deviants vs. Gamers

Computers are becoming more relevant in classrooms and life everyday, in Ohmann's and Shaffer's et al. articles, it is expressed that computers will alter the way students learn, but they disagree on whether it will boost or decrease educational value. There is no question on whether or not computers will change education and the way we learn, the question is whether it will help or damage the educational system.
In the articles, "Computers and Technology" by Ohmann and "Video Games and the Future of Learning" by Shaffer et al. the advantages of using technology are highlighted, but Ohmann exposes that the positive media portrayal isn't always accurate. It is described by Business Weekly that a New Jersey school “went from failure…to the highest scores…partly by becoming ‘one of the most wired’ urban school districts in the U.S” (Ohmann 2). But, if readers look at the footnote they quickly realize that a lot of other efforts were made in improving the school, not just computers, like portrayed. In other words, it isn’t just as easy as adding a computer for every five students that will boost education, school budgets, teacher training, and the arrangement of the school day also plays a large role.
On the other hand, Shaffer et al. seem to believe that technology will have a positive effect that won’t be fabricated by the media. They propose the idea of having video games based on the theories of learning that will allow students to “inhabit roles otherwise inaccessible to them” (Shaffer et al. 3). For instance, educational games would allow students to develop several skills, like: situated understanding, effective social practices, powerful identities, and shared values. Students would be able to explore virtual worlds and learn hands on in a sense. The virtual worlds would not be about memorizing definitions and facts, but about applying facts and definitions in the ‘real world’. Video games would help students learn, as Shaffer et al. suggests, “by doing something as part of a larger community of people who share common goals and ways of achieving those goals” (Shaffer et al. 5).
But, Ohmann claims that the priority of technological learning isn’t to increase educational value, but to increase capital in the world of economics, Ohmann uses colleges as an example, saying that computers have always come before they are exactly deemed useful. “Think about it: do any of you on college faculties…identified a curricular or pedagogical need, then realized…we could use computers to do that; let’s ask the president for some?” (Ohmann 3). The start of technology in classrooms came from the markets for profit, not from teachers for the betterment of learning, education has become a business. It has also taken away the prestige in many educational triumphs, by making it easier for students to plagiarize and “multitask their way though their M.B.A’s” (Ohmann 3).
Regardless of the outcomes, technology has already become a permanent fixture in the classroom. Ohmann can even find some positive in that, “it eases some work that we choose to do; enables some to do work they could not otherwise do at all…facilitates some kinds of libratory teaching; helps troublemakers organize against the WTO, GATT…lets deviants and subversives like us circulate counter propaganda fast; and so on” (Ohmann 5). For Shaffer et al, there is no question to the benefits and virtually no down side. The believe that technology will serve as a, “fundamentally grounded in meaningful activity and well aligned with the core skills, habits, and understanding of a postindustrial society” (Shaffer et al 8). It all depends on how the technology is going to be used that will determine the benefits in the world of academia.