The One About Transformation

CC-by Pop Culture Geek

In spite of my last post, it's time to get to work. In this post,  I'll try to come up with a good, workable definition of transformative use of technology in the classroom, focus on what is working at our school and set up a plan for transforming the tech use in one of my units.

In past posts, I focused primarily on the University of South Florida's Technology Integration Matrix and the TPACK model to help me understand how to fully and actively integrate technology into my classroom in transformative ways. When I sat down to try to develop a workable definition, I found that those resources were more than a bit overwhelming. So I returned to the work we've done previously and refocused on the work of Ruben Puentedura, the developer of the SAMR model. Combined with the image below from the TeachBytes blog, I feel like I better understand what transformative use really is and I'm ready to move forward.


Let's begin with Aditi Rao's "Difference Between 'Using Technology' and 'Technology Integration'" to determine whether or not I'm integrating and how this might be combined with the SAMR model to help me make a more cohesive plan for integrating transformative technology in class room. Moving through this chart, I would say that the first three criterion would put me in the integration phase. Technology use in my classroom is planned and purposeful, supports the learning goals and is routine. The students do not spend a lot of time learning the tech, they come with a lot of skill already, and I'm comfortable letting them explore.

I'm not sure it engages students with content, so that will be an area of focus. The sixth, eighth and final points talk about the use of technology supporting thinking skills. This might be happening in my class, but for my project, I want to spend time thoughtfully planning it. Of course we can expect to see in-class and out-of-class collaboration as a key facet of tech integration and this will definitely be an area of focus in my quest of transformation. This combines with the following key of "facilitation of otherwise impossible tasks." This is admirable, but tough to implement.

Now let's turn to Mr. Puentedura, and what I've learned from digging deeper into his beliefs and the SAMR model. This presentation on getting to transformation, was particularly helpful. I know we talked about SAMR in class, but for whatever reason, I didn't focus on it. After doing more research on SAMR, I feel like it's the best model to follow.



In this model, Puentedura identifies modification AND redefinition as transformative use. At the modification level, Puentedura states that tech use "allows for significant task redesign and a significant increase in student achievement." He also tells us that modification helps to accomplish new goals. He gives the examples of collaborative writing, and jointly critiqued essays. At the redefinition level, technology use allows us to create new tasks that were previously inconceivable.  Like Rao, he identifies collaboration as an example. He also cites the dramatic improvement in student outcomes as an indicator of redefinition.



I appreciate Puentedura's comments on student outcomes, because it has offered me a new lens for identifying transformative use. I will definitely incorporate assessment into my project. Another aspect of his work that I appreciated is his discussion of "the mesh" at 11:10 in this video. Of course the mesh he's referring to is a framework of 21st century skills, these coming from Mishra and Koehler, the TPACK gurus. I agree so much with this, that it hurts. There has to be an institutional framework that binds all of this together. I persoanlly love P21 and I wish our school would adopt it. When you have big ideas to come back to and connect to, everything makes more sense and nothing is done in isolation. This is, in my opinion, the biggest thing holding our school back from really getting important work in technology integration done. Finally, Puentedura references the types of technology use that manifest in the Horizon Report. Social, Mobile, Visualization, Digital Storytelling, and Gaming.

With all of this in mind, it's time to make a plan for transformation in my class.

Put simply, I will focus the use of technology in my classroom with an eye on assessment, and online collaboration. I'm also going to flip my grammar lessons because I've always wanted to see how that would work. Just for kicks, I'll connect the unit to the NETS standards.

 Advanced Spanish - Unit 6 Geography and the Environment
Grammar Lessons to be Flipped: The future tense, introduction to the subjunctive mood, the use of the subjunctive with impersonal expressions and the use of the subjunctive with doubt.

The next piece is a formative assessment structure that is tied to the flipped grammar lessons. These assessments will be created with Google Forms and will allow me to tailor instruction relative to what my students need at any given point. This will require flexibility in my lesson structure, but I believe it's worth it. The structure will be based on Eric Mazur's work on ConcepTests as referenced in Puentedura's work. I like that the model breaks down paths for instruction based on clear percentages. It gives me a clear direction from which to work after collecting the formative data.

The last piece of transformation in this unit will be a re-working of the final project. In the past, students have written a pretend article for the school newspaper outlining a project that they created to improve the community. I believe this could be changed into a collaborative writing piece with a possible "connection to experts" piece. I'm not sure exactly what this would look like. Any ideas out there?

Please leave your reactions to this work in the comments and check back frequently to help me iron out this process as I move forward. I have high expectations for this project and I want to realize as many of them as I can. Thanks in advance for your help!