Mike Afdahl thinks the SAMR mannequin could have run its course.
SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition, nevertheless, as of late expertise is so widespread in lecture rooms that the mannequin itself may 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 completely different fashions,” says Afdahl, Coordinator of Know-how companies for Northwest GA Regional Academic Service Company (RESA). “You may stroll into any classroom in America and so they’re utilizing expertise to some extent.”
Fairly than study this expertise use with the SAMR mannequin, Afdahl thinks the main target 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 would wish to take a look at if I have been a classroom instructor,” he says.
Afdahl was awarded Greatest Implementation of Knowledge Privateness & Cybersecurity at a current Tech & Studying Regional Management Summit (opens in new tab) in Georgia. In his place at RESA, he helps 17 faculty methods in expertise, information expertise, information evaluation, and tutorial and operational planning.
Afdahl went into educating after graduating with a math diploma and rapidly developed a ardour for the occupation. “I fell in love with a imaginative and prescient that math schooling did not need to be simply sitting in a desk fixing issues on worksheets however there was a narrative of arithmetic that may be advised by way of a number of disciplines, but additionally by interacting with the world round us,” he says.
Afdahl desires 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’ll see the world round them within the language through which the universe is written,” he says.
This similar ardour and creativity will be utilized to subjects past math by specializing in making use of new expertise to creativity within the classroom. Afdahl shares ideas and recommendation for the way educators can encourage college students to grow to be engaged creators somewhat than passive customers of data.
Foster Creativity Fairly Than Perfection
Afdahl says educators ought to encourage college students to create new work utilizing the talents they’ve realized at school, even when these creations will not be all the time good.
“Early on as an educator, I type of thought that if I used to be having my college students create one thing digitally, that it needed to be a elegant product on the finish,” he says. “I believe what lecturers want to grasp is that they do not need to be good and even proficient at what they’re creating. I’ve a four-year-old daughter and she or he’s studying to jot down her identify. As she’s writing her identify, 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 Skill
“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 realizing what apps to push. However they are not creating, they’re simply realizing methods to eat it. So I believe we assume that our college students know methods to do these items as a result of they’ve consumed it.”
Nevertheless, that’s like assuming somebody from an earlier era might make a TV present as a result of they watched a whole lot 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 might 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 a complete lot of issues that I might tie again to that have,” Afdahl says.
As we speak, there’s a whole lot of dialog round efficient vs. environment friendly educating practices. “It is not all the time environment friendly for me to do experiences like that, however it’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 neglect, and so once I want to connect information to and we have now 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 little thing and it is okay to your college students to be taught alongside you,” Afdahl says. “The place we have now a possibility is for our college students to see us mannequin, what does it seem like to be a lifelong learner? And to ask them into that strategy of ‘I am an grownup, I do not know every little thing, however here is what I do to be taught new issues.’ And I believe that modeling could be a highly effective studying instrument.”
