To SAMR or not to SAMR

I first wrote about the SAMR model for integrating technology into instruction last April (here, here, and here). When working with teachers, I have occasionally found it useful to refer back to, asking them where they think a particular lesson or activity falls. This usually spurs some reflection about what is the appropriate use of technology in that teachers' instruction, which is exactly my goal.

Krista Moroder has written a thought-provoking blog post explaining why she does not discuss SAMR (or TPACK, another model) with her teachers. Go read it and come back. I'll wait.

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OK, welcome back. I completely agree with her take on TPACK. In my opinion, that model is too complicated to be useful to practicing teachers. I suspect it is more useful for education researchers, but for a middle-school or high-school teacher trying to figure out a lesson plan for the next day, TPACK is too much.

I also agree with her that the focus for professional development should be on good teaching rather than on any particular tool. This is where I think SAMR can be helpful with teachers. In my experience, most teachers who are working on the Substitution level can be encouraged to think about Augmentation, Modification, or Redefinition when prompted by exposure to this model. As they think about how they could modify or redefine their task, they are necessarily thinking about more engaging practices for students. A lesson that moves from S to A, M, or R, doesn't do so without becoming more individualized, more engaging, and more effective. This is where I have found it useful to explicitly use SAMR with teachers, as a way of getting them to think about how educational technology can lead them to more effective teaching practices.

While this is a useful approach for some teachers:

The approach that I think is more effective with teachers is: "you're trying to do Y- and here's how X can make you more efficient or effective (through increased access, better organization, more automation, etc.)". That way, the focus for professional development starts with good teaching practices- rather than starting with the tool.

what I've found is that focusing on better organization or more automation too often leads teachers to Substitution or at best Augmentation. The worksheets they used to xerox, pass out, and collect are now downloaded, filled in, and then emailed to the teacher. Thinking about modifying or redefining the worksheet can usually lead the teacher to add more interactive and more effective components to the lesson.

Having said all this, I really just wrote this post in order to have an excuse to re-post Moroder's wonderful infographic:

Resources and Ideas from SDCUE 2013

Saturday was this year's San Diego CUE conference at CSU San Marcos. This year SDUHSD had more than 20 teachers and administrators attending; last year I think we had five. Samantha Greenstein and Tracy McCabe presented about the Computational Thinking activities that they are incorporating in their science classes; Chris Faist and Tracy McCabe presented on their experiences last year flipping their classes; and I presented about using Google+ and Google Hangouts for professional learning.

When I wasn't presenting, I attended some great sessions, and would like to share some of the resources and ideas from those.

Subtext

Holly Clark (formerly of Carmel Valley Middle School) has been presenting about Subtext at the last several conferences and workshops that I have attended, and now I understand why. She absolutely loves this collaborative reading tool; after listening to her, I feel the same way. Subtext is a game changer for supporting students as they read complex texts.

Subtext (www.subtext.com) is a free iPad app and Edmodo plugin; they will soon be adding a web-based client so teachers and students with any device can use their service. Teachers set up a class account and add their students. Then teachers can import books or articles for their students to read. Along the way, the teacher can add annotations (including images, videos, or web links), checks for understandings, or surveys. Students can use Subtext to highlight and annotate, taking notes as they read. Those notes are then searchable later on, so students can actually go back and find all instances of foreshadowing, for example. Teachers can see where a student is in the reading, so you can keep an eye on students who might be falling behind. Teachers can see students' notes, and students can share them with each other as well. Additionally, Subtext includes a feature that can read text out loud to students.

As we implement more and more Common Core-aligned lessons in all subject area classes, Subtext is going to become a more and more useful tool to help scaffold reading skills and differentiate for readers of all abilities.

Infographics: Telling a Story with Data

Renea Jaeger from Horace Mann Middle School in San Diego presented about her experience having students create infographics about biomes. She shared tools that students used as well as some best practices, including giving students multiple examples of infographics, having students evaluate each others' work early in the process, being explicit with students about how to reference sources, and providing students with sources of copyright-free graphics. Her students typically thought that doing an infographic would be easy, until they actually started working on it. She found that it forced students to use multiple sources for information (not just Wikipedia and one other site), and that it made them think very hard about the best way to present information. She also found that during the final presentations, students clearly demonstrated greater knowledge of their topic than if they had done a report or traditional presentation.

This website has information and links to tools that you could use with your students to have them create their own infographics.

Science Apps

This presentation by Kathy Hayden and Stacey Campo of CSUSM focused on work done in the iQuest and CyberQuest programs. They shared a collection of iPad apps designed for inquiry-based science lessons, primarily in elementary and middle school. Additionally, there are other lessons that include all the resources that a teacher would need to have students complete an inquiry about some topic in science.  (Many of the iPad apps that they shared have equivalents for Android or for web browsers; as I research those, I will add them to this post or in the comments below.)