Wow! Listening and watching Peuntedura's SAMR model...I thought my head was going to bust. Information overload. A lot of useful information, but I felt like I was one of my students, thinking, "when is this guy going to stop talking!?" Don't get me wrong, I thought he had a lot of interesting and useful information but I seriously struggled hard to remain focused. I suppose that's how some of our students feel in our classrooms. Perhaps, I'm becoming more like my students, my attention span nowadays lasts only a few minutes or a few moments.
Nonetheless, his information was quite interesting, kind of like Bloom's Taxonomy for the digital age. Perhaps we could call it, Bloom's Taxonomy Reloaded, or, Bloom's Taxonomy: The Next Generation, or how about, Bloom's Back: this time it's personal. Anyways....
In some respects, I think it's difficult to gauge where I am on this scale especially since it could refer to a wide range of technological applications. In using some apps/programs/software, I would say I'm at the 'R' level whereas for others, I would say I'm at the 'S' level. But if I'm going to refer to my overall tech usage, I would say I'm at the Transformation stage.
I guess for anyone gauge where they are on this scale would depend on their comfort level for using and implementing technology.
Activities to represent the SAMR model
Substitution-the lowest stage of the model, where a student is simply using the technology as direct substitute to traditional methods. I think all teachers and students have used this method. We may have asked our students to submit written work using a word processor. In the class, I will use Google Earth or will ask students to use Google Earth to locate places on the "globe". This is a direct substitution to using a traditional atlas, map, or globe.
Augmentation-if I use the Bloom's Taxonomy model to describe Peuntedura's SAMR model, this stage would be similar to Comprehension to Application level...using the available to technology to make slight changes to the original activity. So if I have asked my students to submit an assignment "typed" instead of asking them to print and submit the document, I could ask them to email the document to me...or in the document, I could ask them to include pictures or links in their document. If i was using Google Earth let's say for a math lesson to calculate scale distance, perhaps I could use the ruler feature for calculating scale distance.
Modification-up Bloom's ladder we go, this would be similar to the Application to Synthesis stage. Using the Google Earth app, once I 've asked my students to calculate scale distance, perhaps I could integrate this with Social Studies and ask students to calculate total distances that ancient traders would have to travel on a certain route by land or sea, (i.e. total distances traders would have to travel on the silk road) and using the panoramio feature of Google Earth or its topographical map feature, ask students to identify geographical features that would pose a great challenge to traders. Oooh...perhaps then, this could lead to a Language Arts reasearch project where students would have to investigate how traders could have overcome those physical obstacles or what other challenges may there have been for traders along their travels. Students at this level could collaborate with one another on their research...they could use collaboration tools such as Google Docs/Drive (wow Google is just awesome...too bad I'm not being paid by them to market them).
Redefintion-I think the best way to describe this level is...this is where the students "own" it, this is where they say, "I got this!" So to continue with my example from the Modification stage, perhaps students could then decide how they want to present this information, perhaps as a slideshow, play, or as a report, maybe students could use Google Earth and create a virtual tour. Whatever students decide to do and how to present it, their material could then be shared online with others (through the use of blogs, youtube, etc), whereby they get to "collaborate" with the larger online community or their peers. Total creativity would be up to the students as they display their mastery not over the content but over using the tech tools available to them.
I know that not many teachers are capable of doing some of the things I have suggested as examples, I know that I would be challenged to do it. It's a good thing that we could simply "Google" instruction or help to do a particular task. Guess what? That's exactly what our students are doing. If they can do it, so can we.
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