Choosing Educational Technology

1. The SAMR Model

The SAMR Model functions as a way for educators to evaluate how they incorporate technology into the instructional apparatus. Creator of the SAMR Model Dr. Ruben Puentedura compares his model to a ladder that serves to enhance and transform learning, the latter of which promotes the development and growth of higher-order thinking skills among students.

Using the SAMR Model, teachers can determine if the technology integrated into a lesson serves the purpose of enhancement by substituting technology as a tool for the lesson while effecting no functional change, augmenting the lesson with technology for functional improvement, or transforming the lesson by way of technological modification that allows for a significant redesign of the task, or instead a complete redefinition of the task into a new format that was previously inconceivable without the inclusion of technology.

Promoting learning activities enhanced and transformed by educational technology helps students to learn and practice skills like analyzing, evaluating, and creating, "which are essential to Common Core State Standards and 21st Century Learning" (Common Sense Education, 2016).

3. The TPACK Model

According to Koehler et al. (2007) from Michigan State University, the TPACK Model describes a framework of teaching with technology based upon "Lee Shulman's construct of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)" adjusted "to include technology knowledge." Combining technological knowledge (TK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and content knowledge (CK), this framework for integrating research-based technological solutions with student learning was devised to help educators identify intersecting elements from each of these three knowledge bases and facilitate student learning while teaching and engaging learners through integrated technology.

Specifically, the goal of TPACK is to improve student learning by encouraging educators to examine their own relative expertise in the relevant curricular content, how instructional strategies like project-based learning (PBL), assessments, and teaching methods affect instruction, and what technology should be used to further lesson goals and redesign tasks in the interest of improving instruction.

For this intersection of PCK to effectively improve with the inclusion of TK, educators must know how to select and operate appropriate technological tools for each technologically integrated lesson while also bearing responsibility for curating "the quality of content that students access through apps, websites, and games for learning" (Common Sense Education, 2016). Common Sense Education (2016) further explains that integrating educational technology into curricular content helps develop students' understanding of a topic, thereby helping to "deepen individual students' inquiry within a given discipline."