Mike Afdahl believes that the SAMR model may have run its course.
SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition; however, these days the technology is so widespread in classrooms that the model itself may need some substitution and modification.
“I don’t know that he The SAMR model has to die (opens in a new tab) necessarily, or if [need to] look at different models,” says Afdahl, coordinator of technology services for the Northwest GA Regional Educational Services Agency (RESA). “You can walk into any classroom in the United States and they are using technology to some degree.”
Rather than examine the use of this technology with the SAMR model, Afdahl believes the focus should be on the student experience. “’Are the students engaged?’ ‘Are students creating or are they consuming?’ That is the new model that I would like to see if I were a classroom teacher,” he says.
Afdahl received the Best Data Privacy and Cybersecurity Implementation award at a recent Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit (opens in a new tab) in Georgia. In his role at RESA, he supports 17 school systems in technology, data technology, data analysis, and instructional and operational planning.
Afdahl took up teaching after graduating in mathematics and quickly developed a passion for the profession. “I fell in love with the vision that mathematics education didn’t have to be just sitting at a desk solving problems on worksheets, but that there was a story of mathematics that can be told across multiple disciplines, but also interacting with the world. that surrounds us ,” he says.
Afdahl wants to make this history of mathematics more accessible to all students. “Not every student is going to dream of being a math major or a mathematician, but they can see the world around them in the language the universe is written in,” she says.
This same passion and creativity can be applied to topics beyond mathematics by focusing on the application of new technologies to creativity in the classroom. Afdahl shares tips and advice on how educators can encourage students to become engaged creators rather than passive consumers of knowledge.
Encourage creativity instead of perfection
Afdahl says educators should encourage students to create new work using the skills they’ve learned in class, even if these creations aren’t always perfect.
“At first as an educator, I thought that if my students were to create something digitally, in the end it had to be a polished product,” he says. “I think what teachers need to understand is that they don’t have to be perfect or even proficient at what they’re creating. I have a four year old daughter and she is learning to write her name. As she writes her name, am I criticizing the way her ‘S’ is backwards? No, I’m not because she’s progressing along this continuum.”
Digital native does not equal creative ability
“We think our students are digital natives, but they are native consumers of digital products,” says Afdahl. “You might see a two-year-old working on an iPad and knowing which apps to push. But they are not creating, they are only knowing how to consume it. So I think we assume that our students know how to do these things because they’ve consumed it.”
However, that’s like assuming someone from an older generation could make a TV show because they watched a lot of TV, says Afdahl.
Get creative with real world applications
While he was a math teacher, Afdahl had his students use cardboard scraps from the cafeteria to build boats that a human could float in. “Yes, it took him a while to build, but now, when he needed to talk about volume, or he needed to talk about density, when he needed to talk about averages, there’s a lot he could relate to that experience. says Afdahl.
Today, there is a lot of conversation about effective versus efficient teaching practices. “It’s not always efficient for me to do experiences like that, but it’s really effective because now they remember that it was 35 degrees in December and we took them to the ponds and a guy fell, and that was the experience they now gained. Don’t forget it, so when I need to attach knowledge and we have an experience that is there”.
learning model
To foster this creativity, educators must recognize that they do not have all the answers. “It’s okay for a teacher to not know everything, and it’s okay for your students to learn alongside you,” says Afdahl. “Where we have an opportunity is for our students to see us model, what does it look like to be a lifelong learner? And invite them into that ‘I’m an adult, I don’t know everything, but this is what I do to learn new things’ process. And I think modeling can be a powerful learning tool.”
