Transformations

SAMR Model

   Transformations don't have to be big things. This chart shows Puentedura's already famous SAMR model. It is a helpful model when thinking about change. A tech newbie teacher at my school came to see me about an intro activity for the start of school. She wants to learn names quickly. Unfortunately, pictures of new kids don't show up for several weeks in our online grade books. Last year, she created a google doc but passed her iPad around and kids took turns creating posting their pictures on successive pages on the same google doc via the same machine. With only a little tweak- we created a slides presentation for this year. She created a page for each child. Using their camera, kids posted a selfie and wrote an introduction of themselves on their assigned pages.
   Yesterday, I showed her how to make a QR code of the finished presentation to hang in her classroom- making the presentation immediately accessible to parents and more importantly other students.
    We are getting into redefinition territory. More importantly, the teacher reports the kids really liked the activity. She had the germ of a good idea last year but didn't know what to do with it or how to implement it. What we did really isn't great shakes. It isn't profound stuff. Still, at a certain level, the tech was a game changer here. She had a good lesson, it was effectively implemented, the kids liked it. The technology allowed her to change the lesson to make it more interactive, quicker, easier, and useful. We reached the level of modification and approached redefinition with the QR code.