SAMR: The Power of Asking "What If?"

I am not going to spend time explaining what SAMR is and what it means. Many others have done that before me. If you'd like to learn the basics of SAMR you can read Kathy Schrock's explanation of SAMR. Or, if you're more of an "original source" type of person you can read about it from Dr. Ruben Puentedura himself.

In order to better understand why the SAMR model is important for schools teaching technology to their students, I think it is important to understand that technology isn't developed so it can be used in schools. Technology is developed so that it can be used for either personal, business, or government use. Schools typically only adopt technology after it has already been widely available to the public for some time.

When new technologies are developed, however, the SAMR model seems like a relevant lens through which to interpret innovation in the private sector.

Take the cell phone as an example. Early cell phones were basically just mobile telephones. Not much more than a cordless phone that could be taken further away from home than before. If the increased distance is not seen as a functional improvement, then early cell phones were a mere substitution for existing cordless phone technology.

Over time, however, the cell phone has gone through myriad improvements in both design and functionality; slimmer phones, larger screens, touch screens, increased memory, internet connectivity, apps, streaming video, and all of the other capabilities that I am not even aware of yet. Modern cell phones have redefined what it means to be a cell phone. In fact, cell phones are capable of so much now that they are increasingly being called mobile devices in lieu of mobile phones. The fact that they are telephones is now more of an afterthought. Being a telephone is just one more thing that these devices can do. Things that were inconceivable when the first cell phones were made available.

I think these improvements came about following a pattern that most technologies follow. The initial versions are created to be substitution for some other task. But as improvements are made, more developers start asking reasonable what-if questions; what if this phone could send text-based communication? What if this phone could take pictures?

A picture of my two sons
taken with ... my phone.

Shoot video? Questions that lead to functional improvements as they are answered. But the more these technologies undergo functional improvements, the less reasonable the what-if questions get; what if I can use this device to connect to and control my personal computer? What if this device could locate me anywhere on the globe? What if this device could tell me how fast I'm going?

But the reasonableness of the question doesn't dictate whether there is a solution. When the first cell phones were invented, it would have seemed like an awfully big jump to start asking whether the phone could connect to and control a computer; something smart phones have been able to do for years now. Or when the typewriter was first invented, asking what if we could just speak what we wanted to type and have the words get typed for us? Technology currently available on computers, tablets, and mobile devices. The unreasonableness of a what-if question often comes down to the fact that the technology to get there does not yet exist.

That's the beauty in asking what if questions. What-if questions are open-ended. Future-oriented. Problems in need of a solution. They stimulate. They motivate. They foster creativity. They engage.

It seems natural, to me at least, that as technology is improved that it does so along a path either identical or very similar to the SAMR model. And this, ultimately, is why I believe the SAMR model is important for schools teaching with technology. The SAMR model provides a real-life framework in which to interpret the design and development of the technology they are using. As students work within the different levels of SAMR and progress from one level to the next, seeing what the current technology can do, they will ask more and more what-if questions. Some of them reasonable. Some of them not.