This post is provided by guest blogger, Sue Dumford, graduate student at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, MS in Training and Development program.

Teachers around the world have been thrown into the deep end with having to rush to put their classes online due to COVID-19. How can they use technology to survive this perilous transition and keep their head above water instead of sinking like a rock? In this article, Youki Terada (2020) discusses the SAMR Model of technology integration to help keep educators afloat. The SAMR Model was introduced in 2010 as a way to use technology to design and develop learning experiences using a four step process of Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. The author, in discussing this model of technology integration, emphasizes that the goal isn’t to use the most advanced tool, but to use the tool that will work best for the job at hand.

              I, like many of my colleagues, am paddling for my dear life to transition my face-to-face classes to an online format and still ensure that my objectives for my classes are realized. While I am trying to keep my head above water, my college is bombarding me with new apps, new apps to old LMS’s, training sessions, best practices, webinars, blogs, and so on and so on. This article reminds us that it is not about implementing as many technologies as possible or finding the latest and greatest technology with all the bells and whistles, but finding the technology that will simply allow us to transition our class, meet our objectives, and evaluate our students’ progress. So if you are like me and feel that you are grasping at life lines, before you are pulled under, read this article, it may just bring you back to safety.

Terada, Y. (4 May, 2020). A powerful model for understanding good tech integration. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/powerful-model-understanding-good-tech-integration