Schools are equipped with a lot of technology these days.
As principals walk the halls of their buildings, they might see one teacher using an interactive whiteboard to teach critical math concepts to students. They might see another teacher showing YouTube videos to explain historical topics. In a writing classroom, students might be working on short responses that they then will submit to their teacher through Google Classroom or Schoology. Another class might be using Kahoot! to review for tomorrow’s science quiz. Students in health class might use Google to look up key vocabulary terms and then employ remote “clickers” to assess their understanding. And on and on the list goes.
The challenge with all of these common uses of learning technologies is that none of them are very deep.
Many of them reinforce a teacher-centric paradigm, in which students receive information from their instructor (or a textbook or a video or a website), and then spit it back out for a grade. Because most students’ day-to-day learning is not very cognitively complex—focusing primarily on factual recall and procedural regurgitation—that lack of intellectual depth also manifests itself in our uses of technology within our classrooms.
Most school leaders want their schools’ technology integration efforts to be deeper and more meaningful than simple replication of traditional analog practices.
As instructional leaders we thus must get beyond the glitz and flash of the technology—which may mask a lack of cognitive depth—and instead critically interrogate how our learning technologies are being used.
Using SAMR to Foster Better Tech Integration
The primary mechanism that most schools are using right now to foster better technology integration is the SAMR framework. SAMR articulates the idea that teachers should move beyond replication when they integrate technology and instead strive for more transformative uses with students. While SAMR is useful as a concept, its use of four levels often puts teachers on the defensive because they feel labeled and judged when placed into a lower level. The SAMR levels often are confusing to educators as well, even for trained technology coaches who are supposed to help teachers with their integration efforts. Because of this lack of clarity and resultant confusion, educators often will place a technology-infused lesson into all four of the SAMR levels. Finally, it is quite possible for an instructional activity to be at the highest levels of SAMR technologically but still constitute low-level thinking work by students.
A different or complementary approach to SAMR would be to keep the basic idea of moving from replication to transformation but to move away from the technology usage levels and instead focus on instructional purpose. Whenever we integrate technology into our lessons or units, we should be able to articulate why we are doing so. Otherwise we are simply implementing technology for technology’s sake. Depending on what our purpose is, we then can ask ourselves some questions about the instructional activity to see if we are accomplishing that purpose.
For instance, imagine that a teacher wants to utilize iPads in her elementary classroom in order to allow students to have more agency over their own learning. By giving every student an individual device, she hopes that students will be able to individualize or personalize their learning, which may result in greater engagement or motivation regarding the learning tasks. This teacher could ask herself the following questions to see if she is accomplishing her purpose.
Gauging the Effectiveness of Learning Technologies
1) Learning Goals — Who selected what is being learned?
(Students / Teachers / Both)
2) Learning Activity — Who selected how it is being learned?
(Students / Teachers / Both)
3) Assessment of Learning — Who selected how students demonstrate their knowledge and skills and how that will be assessed?
(Students / Teachers / Both)
4) Technology Selection — Who selected which technologies are being used?
(Students / Teachers / Both)
5) Talk Time — During the lesson/unit, who is the primary driver of the talk time?
(Students / Teachers / Both)
6) Work Time — During the lesson/unit, who is the primary driver of the work time?
(Students / Teachers / Both)
7) Interest Based — Is student work reflective of their interests or passions?
(Yes / No / Somewhat)
8) Initiative — Do students have opportunities to initiate, be entrepreneurial, be self-directed, and/or go beyond given parameters of the learning task or environment?
(Yes / No / Somewhat)
9) Technology Usage — Who is the primary user of the technology?
(Students / Teachers / Both)
If the teacher likes most of the answers to these questions, great! If not, however, then she could use the same questions to move the activity toward greater student agency.
For example, she could take the second question and ask herself, “What if I wanted the answer to be student instead of teacher? How could I redesign this activity to get there?” Similarly, she could take the eighth question and ask herself, “What if I wanted the answer to be yes instead of no? How could I redesign this activity to get there?”
Enriching Technology Infusion in Classrooms
This redesign process is even more powerful when it is done with teaching peers.
In a PLC or grade-level or department meeting, the teacher could share her classroom activity and then utilize the expertise and experience of colleagues to brainstorm ways to accomplish the instructional purpose of greater student agency through technology usage.
Collectively, the group probably will come up with numerous ways to shift the activity toward greater student agency and accomplish the teacher’s goal.
Using a discussion protocol in this manner can help achieve our larger educational goals regarding deep, robust technology integration without labeling or judging teachers. The trudacot protocol was specifically designed to foster conversations like these. Centrally oriented around the themes of deeper learning, student agency, authentic work, and rich technology infusion, the protocol has sets of questions to help facilitate teacher dialogue around curriculum and day-to-day instruction.
The ISTE Standards for Students say that that our schoolchildren should be empowered learners, digital citizens, knowledge constructors, innovative designers, computational thinkers, creative communicators, and global collaborators. The trudacot protocol can help us get there and currently is being used by schools all across the globe instead of or as a complement to SAMR.