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Sarah Schuld

Professor Davola

ELED 104A

29 September 2017

Assignment 2: SAMR/ISTE Paper

Educators are the backbone to society. They act as a liaison for their students and the

outside world. Without educators, our society would fall flat and would not be a cohesive place.

Becoming an educator may be difficult because you have to always be two steps ahead of your

students. With our ever-evolving society, educators must be malleable to changes and be able to

adapt to things quickly. One thing that is constantly changing in todays world is the technology

and how we use it. Integrating technology in the classroom is very beneficial to students that

makes them want to learn. In order to be able to use technology as a tool for students, educators

must first know how to use it efficiently to meet the needs of their classroom.

My personal goal as a future educator is to be able use technology in my classroom

integrated into my lesson plans to make them more interesting and fun, so that the students will

want to be more involved. When it comes to technology, I can catch onto things rather quickly.

While I myself am a rather tech savvy person, I have never used technology for an educational

setting as an educator, only as a student. My experience with technology has been one sided as a

student up until this point. I want to learn more programs to integrate things using a SmartBoard.

I was always so excited when my teachers would use them that I want to be able to use them for

more than to just write notes and circle things on the board, I want to create interactive lessons.

My goal is to be a Special Education Teacher as a career. Using an iPad for my future students
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with disabilities is something that interests me because I know that it works for them. I have

worked with ASD students on both sides of the spectrum, and everywhere in between. Using

iPads as an assistive learning tool makes things such as behavioral charts, mood charts, and time

cards a breeze to go through. Instead of carrying 3 separate things, you can carry just one, it is

perfect. I know that there is so much more than just that you can do with it, and I hope to learn

more as my education goes further. Focusing on a general education classroom, I just want to

become well rounded in the tools that are offered to educators to use. I am willing to go through

trial and error throughout my teaching career to see what works for students and what does not.

The SAMR Model can be used to amalgamate technology into the classroom by infusing

tools into the lessons for student learning experiences. Through the SAMR model it is proposed

that educators design tasks that have a large impact on students results. The model targets a

higher order of cognitive skill level that makes students be more engaged with what they are

learning. Through redefinition, modification, augmentation and substitution, students are able to

fuse creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding and remembering into what they

are learning. For example, in a classroom setting where students are taking notes, an educator

may choose to substitute that for taking notes on an iPad. To expand and improve that lesson to

get students more engaged and thinking critically while also learning new technology, you can

have them use apps such as Evernote to categorize their notes to organize them. For class

collaboration students could share their notes via Google Docs, or an app such as Evernote to

build off of others information/interpretation of the subject they have just learned. This model

can be helpful to create a framework to using technology into the classroom to best fit the

students needs to learn to the best of their abilities. While they are focusing on the subject itself

they are also learning about the technology and apps they are using.
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The ISTE Standards for Educators helps teachers have a benchmark of reference to what

they should be providing their students to become empowered thinkers in the classroom through

using nonconventional ways of teaching, i.e. integrating technology into the classroom for

learning purposes. To be able to teach technology into the classroom educators must be a learner

and a leader. By continuingly keeping up to date with current technology practices, teachers will

have to be able to catch on to new programs that will benefits their students. With this, teachers

must set goals for their classroom and be there to guide their students in order to be able to apply

the technologies used with ease. If a class does not take to one use of technology do not try to

push it onto them. Just because an educator uses a smartboard in the classroom does not mean

they are properly integrating technology into the classroom; educators must be able to sustain an

enriched learning environment where the students want to participate and are interested in

learning the material.

The ISTE Standards for students creates a guideline for students to best thrive in the

technological classroom. It is important for students be aware of these gauges so they have a

better representation of what their teacher is looking for them to get out of using technology in

the classroom and outside of it. It creates a background for students to always think about. By

setting personal goals within the classroom they have something they want to achieve. It starts in

the classroom and expands out into the real world and beyond when students use these tools to

broaden their horizons using technology.

Overall, I am looking forward to enriching my own knowledge of how to use technology

to better enrich my classroom environment for my future students. I hope to be able to grasp onto

tools quickly in this course. Now that I am aware of the SAMR Model and the ISTE Standards

for both educators and students I hope I can implement them both inside and outside of this
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classroom when using technology. I think it is important for that teachers are willing to

constantly learn new things to be able to teach their students. An educator cannot educate on a

one-lane road. It is a hand and hand relationship in the classroom, both parties are everlasting

learners.