To suggest that instructors do not have significant power over every aspect of classrom interaction is, I’d suggest, dangerous. That power relationship should not be obscured lest instructors forget to check their culturally-mandated privilege. Even excellent instructors who distribute and relinquish power as part of their teaching retain some element of it; for that reason, I think there’s some value in still focusing on the pieces that instructors are bringing into the classroom and how they’re delivering those pieces.

I think you ned to unpack that. It is often NOT there, students often learn in opposition or despite it, or are hampered by it. That’s what causes the confusion of “what are we doing teaching with it?”

We are engaged in learning environments… tools are part of those environments. They can be used well or poorly, thoughtfully or thoughtlessly, wisely or foolishly. In the end, the technologies and their application are not nearly as important as how the learning environment is negotiated between the learners and the educator.

That sort of organistic reductionism doesn’t help the issue much; “It’s all part of everything, and it’s all twisty…” But I think we agree on this…

The key is of course ‘appropriate’ technology, the critical integration of technology into learning environments, and the use of student-centred learning tools and pedagogies; i.e. what Rochelle says.

While an instructor can bring content/ideas/technologies of any variety to bear on a particular classroom experience, can you really say that the instructor can mandate that the learning moments of students will necessarily happen with technology?

Teaching with technology at least locates the power of the instructor exactly where it sits; in the teaching, communication of ideas, inthe structure of the curriciulum itself, in their own actions and decisions. The learning happens with the students (at least, the learning we’re referring to in this context). Instructors don’t have power over students’ internal processes in the same way that they have power over their own (much as many instructors would like to imagine otherwise), and I think the distinction is important to point out. While I agree with Jason that privileging internet technology as some sort of radically different tool (digital expectionalism, anyone?) is unhelpful, I’d argue that it’s important to remember the distributed power within a classroom and acknowledge that an instructor can bring content, tools, ideas, enthusiasm, etc., but they cannot mandate or organize precisely how learning will happen.