Thinking about SAMR

The SAMR model developed by Dr Ruben Puentedura has been around for some time now and three separate events have led me to take another look at it recently.

First our research report for the Manaiakalani Programme was presented to our schools at the beginning of July for the 2012 academic year. It was the first year all the children in our cluster from years 5-13 had owned their own digital device AND the first year all our teachers had been required to create a digital learning environment.  The overall picture was very positive, but in the 100+ pages of data there were also concerns. In her oral feedback Dr Rebecca Jesson pointed out that 2012 was the first year the research data included all children and all teachers, rather than volunteer and lead teachers as in previous years. It is clear that the PLD team has work to do yet, and my thinking turned to the SAMR model.

Secondly, I caught up with a friend I haven't see for a couple of years and she asked my advise about the 'hard to shift' teachers she works with, those who are not prepared to step onto the bottom rung of the SAMR ladder. A recent experience came to mind of digitising some family papers and I suggested she try using a new feature of Google Docs with them to at least entice them onto the Substitution rung. 
Did you know that if you photograph a page of text (any basic camera or phone camera will do - just get the lighting crisp) and upload the photo to your Google Drive with all the conversion options checked, you will then get a Doc that not only has the photo embedded in it but also has copied all the text and pasted it below in the Document ready to use? 

Delete the photo from the Doc and the text remains in your Document ready to process, and no scanner or complicated technology needed.

I know what you are thinking here!  A filing cabinet of worksheets about to be converted to Docs! It is not my preferred option for teaching either , but in 2013 if a teacher has not yet made an attempt to use technology this could be a hook to get started.

Thirdly, we have been investigating Modern Learning Environments and a month ago went overseas to look at some fabulous schools and classrooms.  Everyone in the group agreed that our Manaiakalani schools (most built in the 1950s) would love to have had any of them and our teachers and young people would thrive implementing our pedagogy.  We were intrigued to see that in some instances the very expensive modern buildings were being used in ways that surely hadn't been intended.  And so the SAMR model popped into my mind again.

We saw a multi million dollar building being used at the Substitution level ie young people seated in rows, facing lecturing teachers, but inside a space designed for personalisation, collaboration etc etc. We also saw Augmentation and Modification but mostly we saw Redefinition and were envious :)

Finally, I came across this image below by Susan Oxnevad and thought it was worth sharing with our team.

Managing the Learning Environment

Last year our teachers in 1:1 classes experimented with a variety of ways of managing the learning environment in the digital world. Over the course of the year their thinking began to converge as
• Teachers shared their practice at Netbook Teachers' meetings 
• The PD facilitators, who moved from class to class, began to collate their observations and to share these  
• The recently published research evaluation report included observations and teacher reflections around this.

So this year many of the Manaiakalani Schools felt confident that they had an approach that, while still a work-in-progress,  worked for them.  It created a personalised learning environment for the students, it helped teaching and planning 'make sense', it was transparent to whanau and school management - and was creative, collaborative and fun!


I asked a number of teachers across our schools to create a creen recording video sharing one aspect of how the learning environment was managed in their classes last term.


This post provides links to four primary school classes.  Take the time to explore the links and watch the videos as these teachers talk you through their students use of their Google Site and Google Apps. 


Chris Marks, Pt England School - Year 5/6
Writing movie here, class Google Site here


Sarah Gleeson, St Pius X School - Year 5
Reading movie here, class Google Site here


Helen King, Pt England School - Year 5
Maths (number Strategy) movie here, class Google Site here


Joy Paton, Panmure Bridge School - Year 5/6
Art movie here, class Google Site here


Examples from Tamaki College coming soon…..

Teacher Dashboard + Google Apps for Education

We have been using Google Apps for Education at Pt England School for 3 years now. Russell signed us up when we were at the GooglePlex in California in 2008 - how's that for sitting right next to the help desk!


We began our implementation in a leisurely fashion, bringing onboard those who always put their hand up for new things first and then supporting the rest of the team to start using it.  But it was when the students became Google Apps users that the fun began because everyone was so keen. And the teacher's Google Docs home pages were swamped with documents shared by eager students.


We were very fortunate to meet up with Jan Zawadzki early in this journey and hear about Teacher Dashboard which his company, Hapara, was designing as an add on to Google Apps.  And we were quite vocal in telling him our ideas about how it could be improved to make our teaching lives easier! We get so many questions about it from other educators that we finally got round to putting this video together to give a Pt England School perspective on how we are using Teacher Dashboard.