This is the INSET I run when a department says it wants to know where it stands on technology integration. It works for a department of four and a department of twenty-four. The structure is the same. The only thing that changes is how long step four takes.
The output is a heatmap of every lesson the department has taught in the last half-term, three nudge commitments per teacher, and a vocabulary that the staffroom corridor will keep using afterwards. The framework that does the work is PICRAT, a 3x3 grid that classifies what the technology is doing for the lesson and what students are doing while it does it.
Before the session
Three things to set up.
Each teacher brings five lessons they have taught in the last half-term, written on five slips of paper or on a tablet they can scroll. Subject and year group on each. Any subject, any year group, any cell. The instruction is honest selection. The heatmap fails if everyone brings only their proudest moments.
The PICRAT grid printed on A2, taped to the longest wall in the room. Cells big enough to fit at least thirty sticky notes each. A pad of sticky notes per teacher in a different colour each, so everyone can spot their own placements without naming names later.
A facilitator who can keep time and resist the urge to comment on placements during the silent steps. The framework does the work. The facilitator protects the silence.
0 to 10 minThe framework refresh
If the department is new to PICRAT, run a five-minute refresh. The PIC axis on one wall, the RAT axis on another. Two thirty-second scenarios for each axis: passive, interactive, creative on PIC, and replace, amplify, transform on RAT. Pair the two. The grid on the back wall is the result.
If the department already knows PICRAT, skip the refresh. Show the grid, name the placement question (what is the technology doing, and what are the students doing) and move on.
Ten minutes is a hard cap. If the framework refresh runs over, the conversation never reaches the audit.
10 to 30 minPlace the lessons
Twenty silent minutes.
Each teacher places their five lessons on the grid using their colour of sticky note. One placement per lesson. Subject and year group written on the note. No discussion yet.
The instruction is one sentence: place the lesson where it actually lives, not where you wish it lived. Honest placement is the only useful placement.
The facilitator's job is to circulate and answer single-lesson questions ("does this go in IA or IT?") with the placement test rather than an opinion. For the activity axis: what are the students doing with the technology? Taking it in, responding, or making? For the technology axis: try the swap. Could the technology be swapped for something else that carries the task, asking the same of students? If yes, R. If the lesson would lose something it uses, such as instant feedback students act on or a shared view of everyone's answers, A. If there would be no such activity, T.
By minute 30, the grid is covered. Walk to the back of the room and look at the cluster.
30 to 45 minRead the heatmap
Step back from the grid. Ask the room: where do the dots cluster? In my experience the bottom row (PR, PA, PT) is often the heaviest. Yours may not be.
The conversation now has three questions.
Is the cluster a deliberate choice or a habit? Some PR is the right placement: a teacher explanation, a short video, a reading task before a discussion. Some PR is there because it was the quickest thing to plan. A department audit is the moment to be honest about which lessons fall into which category.
Which cells are thin or empty? Ask why. Often it is because a different cell feels like more planning, when in practice it is one swap (read this together becomes mark up this together).
Where are the outliers? Find the notes sitting on their own, in whichever cell. Let the teacher who placed one describe why that cell suited the lesson. The rest of the department learns more from one detailed account of a working lesson than from any framework explainer.
The facilitator does not propose a target distribution. The grid is for the department to read for itself.
45 to 60 minPick three nudge commitments
The last fifteen minutes is the commitment step.
Each teacher picks one lesson whose cell was not a deliberate choice and writes the smallest move on a fresh sticky note: the single change that would put it in the cell the lesson needs. Same lesson, one change. Stick the new note on top of the old one on the grid.
Then each teacher picks a second lesson and asks a different question: did this lesson need the technology at all? If it would run just as well without it, the note says so. If the cell was right but the timing was not (the right lesson at the wrong point in the unit), the note says that instead. Stick it on top of the old note.
Then each teacher picks one lesson that sat in exactly the right cell and writes a share-back commitment: a five-minute slot at the next department meeting, a one-paragraph write-up, or a co-observation invitation. The point is to spread what worked across the team.
Three sticky notes. Three commitments per teacher. The grid now has the audit (the original placements) and the next moves (the commitments) layered on top.
Take a photograph of the grid before the room empties. Email it to the department by the end of the day. The photograph is the heatmap. The next half-term's department meetings now have a reference image.
What the department walks away with
Three things end up in the department's hands.
A visual baseline. Where the lessons currently sit. No opinions, no judgements, just placements.
Three nudge commitments per teacher. Realistic, specific, and visible to the rest of the department because they are on the grid in a different colour.
A vocabulary that survives the staffroom corridor for the next half-term. Teachers who have placed five lessons on a grid have internalised the language in a way that no slide deck can reproduce. The next time someone proposes a Creative Transform lesson, the room will know what is being asked.
If the department wants to deepen the audit between now and next half-term, drop a sample lesson into Review for an AI classification, or run Practice as a ten-minute warm-up at the start of the next department meeting. Coach is a useful follow-up for one-to-one conversations with teachers whose placements surprised them. All three reinforce the placement habit between INSETs.
Where the dots cluster, the conversation begins.
The audit is a recurring habit. The grid that comes out of the first session is the baseline. Six months later, run the same INSET with five new lessons per teacher, and compare the heatmaps. The change is visible, the work is visible, and the conversation is shorter every time.
Andy Perryer is Director of Education Innovation at a group of international schools and the creator of PICRAT Suite. The PICRAT framework was developed by Royce Kimmons, Charles Graham and Richard West in their 2020 paper in the CITE Journal. A printable INSET deck for this workshop is in development.