Page 171 - Resources and Support for the Online Educator

Small Changes and the SAMR Model • Chapter 6

experienced years of speed bumps and road blocks along their journey. One
particular researcher, Dr. Ruben Puentedura (hippasus.com/blog/), had been
studying the effects of technology on learning since the late 1980s. When
MLTI was launched, he focused his energy and research around this statewide
initiative and gathered some great data about what really makes a difference
for learning with devices.

Through his research, he developed the SAMR model (mrhook.it/samr1). The
SAMR model identifies four different levels of student use of: Substitution,
Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. It was great to see use of
technology synthesized in nice, easy-to-grasp levels like those in SAMR. The
one drawback of the model that I always saw was that it was designed to look
like a ladder, which implied that, as a teacher, you need to have your students
climb to the top (Redefinition) to be successful. In reality, it was much
different from that. As I began to have a conversation about this with good
friend and colleague Greg Garner (twitter.com/classroom_tech), he mentioned
to me that it was more like a swimming pool than a ladder. I totally bought
into his thought process and ran with it, creating my own version of the
SAMR model like a swimming pool (Figure 6.1) and writing two blog posts
about

Figure 6.1 The SAMR swimming pool.

the idea.

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