Use the SAMR Model to Energize Class Tech

This is a issue I get typically from lecturers: Technological innovation is generally an added layer of get the job done in my classroom. How can I blend it into what I previously do without using time I do not have? When I very first resolved this situation fifteen years in the past, it was all about replacing traditional classroom resources with one particular on a computer. For illustration, ebook stories had been typed on the personal computer in its place of handwritten, or math details were being practiced with a math game rather of flash playing cards. But that rapidly became cumbersome. Lecturers didn’t know how to use the electronic applications and there was by no means sufficient education to untip that equilibrium. At the stop of the working day, paper-and-pencil was less complicated, speedier, and perfectly understood. Before long, even the most stalwart tech-infused academics learned it was just as effective to use standard tools and pull out the tech things for exclusive occasions.

What took place? How did these types of a fantastic idea go so incorrect? The issue was four-fold:

• students did not have the technology basis to easily incorporate electronic equipment into assignments. Much too often, the effort and hard work to give evidence of learning suffered as students (and teachers) grew to become mired in initiatives to get the know-how to perform. Where is the resource? How do you do **? Why is the program not doing work?
• teachers did not have coaching in the equipment. Even educational facilities that produced herculean attempts to teach instructors in know-how located by themselves flailing. Even lecturers who understood the software would wrestle with the insufficient infrastructure, the undependability of the technological innovation itself, and the non-intuitive character of so many of the applications they wished to use. As a result, they utilised equipment they understood rather than people ideal-suited for the project and finding out.
• jobs always–really, normally–took lengthier making use of technology than the standard reduced-tech approach.
• school infrastructure frequently struggled to support the interesting programs that tech-savvy academics desired to attempt. Desktops froze or the community became more than-burdened or the world-wide-web went down just as learners demanded them the most. The money demanded to take care of these challenges was measured in the thousands of dollars–tens of countless numbers. As well a lot of schools just didn’t have that budget.

What a lot of had hoped would be a transformative instrument, enabling educators to train differentiated lessons, deal with far more material, and provide in much more genuine means, turned a daily wrestle. Exactly where technologies integration was intended to glance like A (below), rather it became B:

If this sounds like you, continue to keep examining. I’m going to present you how to fix it.

A lot of of you have heard of Dr. Ruben Puentedura’s SAMR Model. It’s intended as a barometer for analyzing engineering incorporation into instruction, but I’m going to suggest it be utilized instead as a guide for integration. Start at the S–Substitution–and get the job done your way by the concentrations as you are all set. This gives an uncomplicated, normal, resilient, and native way to integrate technology into teaching.

Here’s how it performs:

Substitution

Tech acts as a immediate device substitute with no useful improve.

This is a good setting up place. Glance at what you are doing in your lesson ideas and consider what tech equipment could swap what you now use. For example, if you make posters to talk about wonderful inventors, use an on line tech instrument like Canva? If you are practicing math capabilities, use a single of the several on the net math systems. If you are exploring for a challenge, visit an on the web library.

Augmentation

Tech functions as a direct software substitute with functional improvement.

At this stage, you not only substitute an unplugged instrument with a tech a person, but you increase the discovering options. As an alternative of simply just creating the poster using Canva or Glogster, embed the finished venture into the class website to share with other pupils. Analyze math on line, but use a application like Khan Academy that tracks progress and scales substance to student requires. Although studying making use of an on the web library, cite supplies in an ideal fashion to comply with scholar electronic tasks.

Modification

Tech will allow for considerable task redesign.

By now, tech applications facilitate the pupil ability to satisfy not only the certain curriculum tasks, but better-buy contemplating and the Habits of Intellect that make up thriving grown ups. The poster started off earlier mentioned can be a collaborative venture that engages a group of pupils, reinforcing their capabilities at talking and listening, doing work in teams, and individuals vital composing techniques of edit-revise-rewrite.The math follow can be prolonged by asking pupils to build their possess assessments, to evaluate their progress. The on the web study turns into collaborative take note-using as a scholar group researches a matter and requires notes making use of a shared doc.

Redefinition

Tech lets for the development of new duties, formerly inconceivable.

At this enlightened level of tech integration, the poster gets to be a student-directed exemplar of their studying. In point, it could not even be a poster. The student examines what they have acquired in the device, the wants of task-function-viewers, and strategically selects the tool very best suited to communicating their know-how. That could be the poster, a film, a music, a phrase cloud, or a Thinglink to combine a huge range of media. The undertaking is inquiry-driven, pupil-centric, and dynamic.

***

There is the model. Start off with substitution. Stay there right until Augmentation happens the natural way. You never pressure it it basically arrives since you and your pupils are ready. The exact same is true with relocating up to Modification and Redefinition. There are no expiration dates to hurry you ahead, no bell that’ll ring if you really don’t finish by a sure time. You basically let it to unfold in a natural way.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 engineering for 30 several years. She is the editor/writer of in excess of a hundred tech ed methods such as a K-12 technological innovation curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Electronic Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Learn Trainer, webmaster for four weblogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed subject areas, contributor to NEA These days, and writer of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Times. You can locate her sources at Structured Mastering.