Understanding SAMR

Selecting a Technology Integration Model That’s Right for Your Classroom

The SAMR model, developed by Dr. Puentedura, Ph.D, is a “four tiered path to transform traditional learning into a technology-rich continuous learning space”. Essentially, it’s a way of understanding how technology is functioning in a classroom, how it’s impacting the students, and how it’s improving learning outcomes. It breaks down into four components, or stages: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. As a school progresses along the SAMR model, technology becomes more transformative, more purposeful, and has the potential to drive schools towards previously unreachable markers in creativity, discovery, and achievement.

Here are some key underpinnings of the SAMR model:

1. It understands technology integration as movement on a continuum: with SAMR, educators can can frame their digital conversion in such a way that ensures steady movement towards scalable, purposeful technological immersion.
2. By understanding the transition to digital as a work-in-progress, the model takes a school’s available resources into account, and works to maximize the purpose of those resources, all while paving the way towards deeper implementations.
3. SAMR recognizes that every member of a learning community interacts differently with technology, depending on their role: it enables teachers to take ownership of technology-infused instruction, and students to take ownership of their own learning journeys, in terms of both academic content and digital literacy.
4. SAMR enables teachers to focus on the way students will be impacted by the implementation of technology, rather than exclusively on the components of the technology itself.
5. SAMR recognizes that the technology can only be a driving force in a classroom if motivated educators stand behind it.

Understanding the tiers:

SAMR is made up of four tiers: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. Each tier marks progression towards more comprehensive, precise, and innovative implementation of educational technology. Each step is highly detailed, but here’s an overview to help you get started:

• Substitution: The foundation for change and starting point to progress to the next stages
• Augmentation: The point at which educators can begin to measure change and recognize real progress in outcomes
• Modification: The step where enhancement of instruction starts to look more like a transformation: where informative data enables teachers to redesign tasks
• Redefinition: The point at which transformation is evident, in both the school’s achievement of full-tech immersion, and in the learning outcomes and experiences of the students

To learn more about SAMR, and to discover how one educator transformed his classroom with the model, check out this success story:

To begin your district’s journey with SAMR, explore this stepping-stone to purposeful, productive, and transformative EdTech implementation:

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