Switch course ▾
Session 1. Purposeful Technology: Learning First
Objective. Judge whether a digital tool helps pupils learn by asking what it adds, place a task on the SAMR levels and decide to keep, upgrade or drop it.
Almost every school now has some technology: a projector, a few tablets, a teacher's phone. The pressure to use it can be strong, but a tool earns its place only by helping pupils learn. This session gives you one simple habit: ask what the tool adds before you plan around it. Sometimes the answer is a lot. Sometimes it is nothing, and the board, a notebook and a good question will do better. Both answers save you time.
Key ideas
Learning first, tool second
- A tool is useful only if pupils learn or do something better with it than without it. Being new, free or available is not a reason.
- Start from your objective (course 5.2), then ask which tool, if any, serves it. Sometimes the answer is chalk and the board.
- Research summaries on digital technology, such as the EEF guidance, find that how it is used matters far more than whether it is used.
The SAMR ladder
- Ruben Puentedura's SAMR model gives four levels: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition.
- Substitution and Augmentation improve a task; Modification and Redefinition change it. Higher is not always better: a good lesson may use Substitution for a minute.
- Use the ladder as a question, 'what does this add?', not as a score for your teaching.
Four questions before you use a tool
- Purpose: what will pupils learn or do better? Access: who can use it, and what is my offline fallback?
- Quality: is it accurate and suitable for the age? Safety: what pupil data does it collect, and do I have permission?
- If you cannot answer the first question in one sentence, wait; the later sessions of this course cover the others.
Teachers decide, not the tool
- Good digital teaching needs three things together: subject knowledge, teaching skill and knowing the tool. This is the idea behind the TPACK framework (Mishra and Koehler).
- Your knowledge of your pupils, your textbook and your 45 minutes cannot be replaced by an app.
- Start small: change one task in one lesson, watch what happens, then decide.
SAMR at a glance
| Level | What the tool does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Substitution | Replaces a tool; no real gain | Typing a paragraph instead of writing it |
| Augmentation | Same task, a real gain | Recording a reading and listening back |
| Modification | Task is redesigned | An audio guide for a partner school |
| Redefinition | A task not possible before | Two distant classes compare shared data |
The SAMR ladder
The hidden cost of a tool
Every tool has a price beyond money. It takes preparation time, it needs electricity and sometimes internet, and pupils need a few minutes to learn it before they can use it for learning. In a class of 32 with four tablets, the real cost may be the 28 pupils who wait. Count these costs honestly, then compare them with what the tool adds.
UNESCO's 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report makes a related point at system level: technology helps when access, sensible rules and well-prepared teachers are in place. For you this means starting where your school actually is, not where a brochure says it should be.
Try small, look, then decide
Treat a new tool as an experiment. Use it in one lesson for one task, and decide in advance what you will watch: Did more pupils talk about the idea? Did mistakes appear earlier? Did the task take more or less time than on paper? Write two lines afterwards.
Also decide your stop rule. If the tool needs more than five minutes of setup in a 45-minute lesson, or if half the class waits, put it away for now. Dropping a tool is not failure; it is a teaching decision, and a good one.
Examples from the classroom
A poem recorded in Samarkand
Scene. Dilnoza teaches Grade 3 in Samarkand. Pupils read a four-line poem aloud, but she cannot listen to 30 children. She borrows one phone, and pairs record each other for 30 seconds, then listen and fix one thing. In 15 minutes every child has heard their own reading. Pupils without access to a phone read to a partner and give one tip.
Insight. Hearing yourself is a real gain the paper version cannot give: Augmentation, with an easy paper route.
The projector in Tashkent
Scene. Malika, a Grade 7 science teacher in Tashkent, projects the textbook text so she does not write it on the board. She notes that pupils still copy the same words and do not talk more. She keeps the projector for diagrams she cannot draw well, and goes back to the board for everything else.
Insight. Substitution is fine when it saves effort, but it should not be mistaken for a better lesson.
Two classes, one temperature table
Scene. Jasur teaches Grade 6 in Fergana. His class and a class in Nukus each record the 9:00 temperature every school day for a month and send it as a text message. Both classes build a chart on paper, compare it and ask why Nukus is colder in the morning. The pupils who have no phone give their reading to Jasur on paper.
Insight. Real data from a distant class is a task that was not possible before: Redefinition, with a paper fallback.
Common pitfalls
- Choosing the tool first and the learning goal second.
- Treating the top of the SAMR ladder as a score every lesson must reach.
- Forgetting the pupils without a device, electricity or internet when you plan.
- Keeping a tool because it was donated or expensive, even though it adds nothing.
SAMR Sort and Upgrade
- Read the eight task cards in your Activity Kit and the four SAMR level labels. Each card describes one use of technology in a classroom.
- In pairs (10 min): place each card under S, A, M or R. For each, write one phrase on what the tool adds, or write 'nothing'.
- Choose two cards at the Substitution level. Decide: KEEP (it is quick and harmless), UPGRADE (change the task so the tool adds something) or DROP (use paper). Write the upgrade in one sentence.
- As a group (10 min): share your upgrades. For one of them, name the paper-only route that still reaches the same learning.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which cards were hard to place, and why? What did that tell you about the task rather than the tool?
- Was there a card where paper did as well as the tool? What does that mean for how you use technology?
- Think of a tool you use now. Which question from the four would you ask about it today?
Reflect
- Which digital tool did you use most recently, and what did it add for pupils?
- Is there a lesson you teach where a tool could turn a Substitution task into Augmentation?
- What would you do if the electricity or internet were off tomorrow?
Try it tomorrow
- Pick one tool you use and write its SAMR level and what it adds in one sentence.
- Change one Substitution task into Augmentation, keeping a paper route for pupils with no device.
- After a lesson with a tool, write two lines: what changed for pupils, and would you do it again?
Further reading and links
Before you use a tool, ask what it adds for learning; if the answer is nothing, keep the paper.