expected to keep abreast of multiple forms of technology. She also conceives of games-based learning in classrooms as an inherently positive technology that allows for introspection and self- reflection at worst, spaces of play where exploration leads to critical engagement with a subject matter at best. I want to push back on the importance of play as a space of exploration and how games can lead to introspection and self-reflection and recontextualize the teaching bodies we’re examining. I believe that, in a college/university setting, her argument may be true to some extent. But within a K-12 classroom setting like the ones that the list of scholars in the paragraph above are excluding, like the one my mother works in, and like the classrooms whose technology I supported, these can quickly become untenable goals that end up with implicit value placed on outside-of-the-classroom support structures that all students may not have access to, coupled with the assumption that students have the technological and gamic competencies to leverage within the classroom. Attention must be paid to the granularity of classrooms and learners so that appropriate interventions can be leveraged to truly include all students. The uncritical buy-in from administration to the idea of technology and games as a cure-all for all things that need to be cured distracts from questions of basic economic, social, and emotional inequity that plague public education.

## Promises of a “Better Future”

The overarching theme of my time as a technology support specialist was that the mere presence of technology in a classroom overtook usability and users. Our superintendent was often photographed posing with some new piece of classroom technology (Xbox Kinects, SmartBoards, Document Cams, COWS [Computers on Wheels]) in one of the upper-middle- class schools of the district. Teachers had to constantly change their lesson plans to try and utilize technology that was often more clunky and invasive than helpful. The constant pressure by the superintendent that every teacher use every technology, and what’s more, be evaluated on using it was crippling; continues to be crippling. The first piece of technology that I was trained to support were SmartBoards. The SmartBoard has the ability to function as a replacement for an overhead projector, a companion to a computer, and a tool for interactive, group-and-game-based classroom tactile and kinetic learning. SMART Technologies, a prominent manufacturer of smartboards, presents a very one- sided view of how the technology is seamless, easy to use, well supported by the company, and most of all: interactive and engaging. The school board introduced a bond to purchase these boards in April of 2010, the bond was approved in May, the boards were purchased in June, and delivered in July. District-wide, all technology support workers had one day-long session where we played with the boards and then teachers received one half-day of training before the start of the school year on the SmartBoards; my colleague and I wrote a short introduction to what the boards are, what they did, why they are better than traditional whiteboards, and why use of the boards is mandatory. Something I wrote that will haunt me forever: “Smartboards will teach students how to critically engage with other forms of technology, allowing them to develop useful technology industry skills and be productive members of society.” I drank the kool-aid, so to speak, that Christo Sims talks about