The SAMR and TPACK models were helpful when contemplating how impactful my lesson could be. In a normal lesson plan, I’ll work through objectives and essential questions, but I do not focus on technology as a tool/tutor/tutee, or how that technology could expand my students’ education. I believe this change is especially true this year as this is the first year my school has had 1:1 technology. Now, all of my lesson plans should incorporate the SAMR and TPACK models to help improve my blended learning plans. With the SAMR model specifically, I took this lesson plan about writing news stories that I originally designed on a Google Slide, and I worked through the steps of Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition, and changed the entire plan. I substituted the platform I was using which was more user-friendly and had more functions. It allowed me to modify how the students keep track of their work, add in multimedia elements and track their progress in real time. The hardest step was Redefinition, thinking about how new tasks could be created with this software that wasn’t available to me before. I can have the students create multi-media elements to include in their story, and gear my lesson towards online media news rather than print media. They can now look at a story nationally or globally, rather than just school-wide. I certainly had to think about how my approach to lesson planning could impact education, specifically that if I am continuing to use the same materials, my lessons will not evolve with the technology available. With the SAMR model I can imagine my lessons in a context greater than the seats of my classroom.
