Mike Afdahl thinks the SAMR mannequin might have run its course.
SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition, nonetheless, lately expertise is so widespread in lecture rooms that the mannequin itself might have some substitution and modification.
“I don’t know that the SAMR mannequin has to die (opens in new tab) essentially, or if we [need to] take a look at totally different fashions,” says Afdahl, Coordinator of Know-how providers for Northwest GA Regional Academic Service Company (RESA). “You may stroll into any classroom in America and so they’re utilizing expertise to a point.”
Slightly than look at this expertise use with the SAMR mannequin, Afdahl thinks the main focus ought to be on the scholar expertise. “’Are the scholars engaged?’ ‘Are the scholars creating or are they consuming?’ That is the brand new mannequin I’d wish to take a look at if I have been a classroom instructor,” he says.
Afdahl was awarded Finest Implementation of Knowledge Privateness & Cybersecurity at a latest Tech & Studying Regional Leadership Summit (opens in new tab) in Georgia. In his place at RESA, he helps 17 college programs in expertise, knowledge expertise, knowledge evaluation, and educational and operational planning.
Afdahl went into instructing after graduating with a math diploma and shortly developed a ardour for the career. “I fell in love with a imaginative and prescient that math training did not need to be simply sitting in a desk fixing issues on worksheets however there was a narrative of arithmetic that may be informed by a number of disciplines, but in addition by interacting with the world round us,” he says.
Afdahl needs to make this story of arithmetic extra accessible to all college students. “Not all college students are going to have goals of being a math main or a mathematician, however they will see the world round them within the language during which the universe is written,” he says.
This similar ardour and creativity might be utilized to subjects past math by specializing in making use of new expertise to creativity within the classroom. Afdahl shares suggestions and recommendation for the way educators can encourage college students to turn into engaged creators somewhat than passive customers of information.
Foster Creativity Slightly Than Perfection
Afdahl says educators ought to encourage college students to create new work utilizing the talents they’ve discovered in school, even when these creations should not all the time excellent.
“Early on as an educator, I form of thought that if I used to be having my college students create one thing digitally, that it needed to be a cultured product on the finish,” he says. “I feel what lecturers want to grasp is that they do not need to be excellent and even proficient at what they’re creating. I’ve a four-year-old daughter and she or he’s studying to write down her title. As she’s writing her title, am I criticizing the best way her ‘S’ is backward? No, I am not as a result of she’s progressing alongside this continuum.”
Digital Native Doesn’t Equal Inventive Capability
“We really feel that our college students are digital natives, however they’re native customers of digital merchandise,” Afdahl says. “You might even see a two-year-old engaged on an iPad, and figuring out what apps to push. However they are not creating, they’re simply figuring out learn how to eat it. So I feel we assume that our college students know learn how to do these items as a result of they’ve consumed it.”
Nonetheless, that’s like assuming somebody from an earlier era may make a TV present as a result of they watched a variety of TV, Afdahl says.
Get Inventive With Actual-World Functions
Whereas he was a math instructor, Afdahl had his college students use leftover cardboard from the cafeteria to construct boats on which a human may float. “Yeah, it took some time to construct, however now once I wanted to speak about quantity, or I wanted to speak about density, once I wanted to speak about averages, there’s an entire lot of issues that I may tie again to that have,” Afdahl says.
As we speak, there’s a variety of dialog round efficient vs. environment friendly instructing practices. “It isn’t all the time environment friendly for me to do experiences like that, but it surely’s actually efficient as a result of now they keep in mind it was 35 levels in December and we took them out to the ponds and one man fell in, and that was the expertise that now they will not overlook, and so once I want to connect data to and we now have an expertise that’s there.”
Mannequin Studying
To foster this creativity, educators ought to acknowledge that they don’t have all of the solutions. “It is okay for a instructor to not know every part and it is okay on your college students to study alongside you,” Afdahl says. “The place we now have a chance is for our college students to see us mannequin, what does it appear to be to be a lifelong learner? And to ask them into that strategy of ‘I am an grownup, I do not know every part, however this is what I do to study new issues.’ And I feel that modeling is usually a highly effective studying instrument.”
