So what? So that!

So much technology has a propensity to be gimmicky. It is a fine balancing act to choose between those activities with technology that can be supportive of learning and those which do little to help with learning other than the children might get to see you as the ‘fun’ teacher. That isn’t helpful to you as their teacher or to your learners, their learning, or your subject either for that matter!

Using technology as a gimmick devalues you as a teacher, devalues the technology and ultimately what you are doing in the classroom. Keep the depth of challenge and as I’ve shared for some time, if your use of technology isn’t going to either:

a) Help you in the activity of teaching
b) Help them in the activity of learning
c) Help save time or create efficiencies

…then you probably will need to give a pretty strong argument for the use of technology in the context within what it is that you’re teaching.

Ruben Puentedura of the ‘SAMR’ framework notoriety says that at the redefinition level of the model, we should use technology to ‘do things that wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for the technology’. As I and others have written about before though, SAMR isn’t a ladder to climb and just because you can do something with technology, it doesn’t mean that you should. Equally, things that are seen as being substitution, such as note taking digitally compared with by hand, can be really helpful, but it isn’t ‘redefinition’.