SAMR-I

What a clever name for this blog post. I must say that I am quite clever. But if we are being honest it was Sasha's idea :(. Either way I think that its awesome. Moving on!

One idea for redefinition in a math classroom came from the SAMR videos that we watched! I watched a video on a 7th grade geometry class where they were "flipping" the class. The teacher was recording videos of lessons for the kids to watch at home, and then they would do what would normally be their homework in class. In order to explain how this idea is redefinition, I need to start by explaining how this same idea could be either a substitution, augmentation, or modification.

Substitution - Doing a flipped classroom would be substitution if the teacher recorded his lecture at home and made it available for the kids to watch only for one day at a time. This wouldn't be any different than teaching in class and just moving on the next day.

Augmentation - A flipped classroom could be augmentation if the teacher left the video up for the length of the unit. This way kids could access it over and over again, so that if they don't get a concept, they could revisit it as they need/please in order to better grasp the concept.

Modification - Taking this one step further, a teacher would need to have access to software which could track how much kids are accessing the videos, and which videos they are accessing. I know that this software exists, but I'm not sure in what capacity it is available to teachers? Either way, being able to see how much/if students are accessing the lecture videos would be a hugely powerful tool in order to know what needs to be gone over during class time. If you see that 10 students have watched the video on finding the area of a trapezoid 2-3 times each, you should probably go over specific examples of this during class time.

Redefinition - The final step of taking this idea to the redefinition stage would be all of the above steps, plus having an iPad or two available for the kids. With these iPads, kids could record their own lectures when they have mastered some part of a unit and post it to a local forum that the whole class has access to. Part of kids assessment would be creating and posting videos, as well as commenting on their classmates videos in order to make any corrections/suggestions to the content of their video. This would be another tool for the teacher to tell if there are any overwhelming misconceptions in the content that is being covered. If a student makes a small mistake in their video, and no one addresses it, or if a student makes a "perfect" video, and multiple students comment on it correcting it in some way, that would be an easy way to see what needs to be addressed with additional time in class.