The SAM what? SAMR

I remember that I once went to a PD about the SAMR model a few years ago. Unfortunately, that's where it stayed in that PD. I am glad to be able to visit this again and put this knowledge into practice.

The SAMR model in many ways reminds me of Bloom's Taxonomy. You have the lower levels that are the basic levels but the goal is to get students to the higher levels, to the higher order thinking levels. To me, the SAMR model is almost the same thing. In the SAMR model, the Enhancement levels (Substition and Augmentation) would correlate to Knowledge, Comprehension, and Application of Bloom's. The Transformation level (Modification and Redefinition) would correlate to Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. However, I find the SAMR model much simpler and much easier to incorporate technology. 

For myself, I would say that I am somewhere between Substition and Modification. In my teaching, I am struggling to get my students to the Redefinition levels. I feel like I'm not getting as far as I would like to take my students to higher-order thinking skills.

I'm going to use an example from a previous post about implementing certain 21st-Century Skills. The students would be working together to solve math word problems. 

Math-based problem-solving challenges. Group students into groups of 2-3 give each group a specific math challenge. This math challenge must be a word problem. It can based on the current unit of study. The students must then work together to solve the problem. Each member of the group must be able to know how to solve their specific problem. Once each group has found the solution to their problem, create a new grouping of 2-3 students. This time give the students the same problems so that one person in each group has already solved the problem but must allow the other members in the group to solve the problem and or show the others how to arrive at the solution. An activity like this could probably be done at least once a week or once every two weeks in class.

I would modify the above challenge slightly to work in this situation.

Substitution - The problem will be listed in Google Classroom in a shared document. Students use their Chromebooks to read the problems. This is essentially the same if students were reading it off a paper source.

Augmentation - Students copy the problem from the document and create another shared document to be shared among their own group.

Modification - As students are working on the problem they re-write the problem in their own words as they are discussing it among themselves. Students can use available technology to discuss the problem. They can use the chat feature or commenting feature or even video-call if they are working remotely. Students are now working collaboratively to find a solution.

Redefinition - Once a solution is found, students create a step-by-step video tutorial that demonstrates how they found the solution to the problem. Students then post their solution video to Google Classroom for other students to view and/or comment. Students could also create their own word problems that they would share in Google Classroom for other students to complete.