This week’s readings and videos were fantastic in prompting me to think about how I think about technology and have been planning to use it in the classroom.
Reflecting on the activities and tasks I’ve thought up over the past year of schooling that integrate tech, there are a few that fall under the Modification and Redefinition of the SAMR Model, which is where the tech learning gets taken to the next level. But admittedly, the majority are Substitution or Augmentation. Making this realization didn’t feel great, and was an obvious result of my lack of tech comfort going into teacher education.
While I was able to pinpoint this an an area to improve on, it was reassuring the hear Ruben Puentedura, creator of the SAMR model, speak of how to use it and how it is most often used.
All of the examples he offers are fabulous at putting the different levels into perspective, but what is the greatest comfort after my initial panic, was him mentioning that sometimes using Substitution or Augmentation makes the most sense for a given activity.
To further this clarifying perspective, in the following interview with Puentedura he gave an example of the “fancy robotics” project that he saw students working on. He explained that it presented itself as Redefinition and that the final result was technologically impressive, but he noticed that the learners were simply looking at instructions in a text, not truly understanding what they were doing with this machine. Because of this, it cannot be said that the technology integration was truly transformative.
To me, this drove home the duel purpose of the SAMR model; to support learning through integrated tech, as well as avoid meaningless integration of technology. Through hearing him speak more on the topic and how to use it effectively, I feel this model is one I’d like to keep in mind when bringing technology into my future classrooms.
References
Common Sense Education. (2016, July 12). How to apply the SAMR model with Ruben Puentedura [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQTx2UQQvbU
Terada, Y. (2020, May 4). A powerful model for gnderstanding Good tech integration. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/powerful-model-understanding-good-tech-integration
What Is The Purpose of School?. (2020, May 31). Demystifying SAMR with Dr. Ruben Puentedura [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9h9ePoXqS8