Lesson observations of technology integration tend to go one of two ways. The observer ignores the technology and writes about the pedagogy as if the iPad on every desk were not there. Or the observer treats the technology as the lesson, hunts for tools, and writes a verdict shaped like a vendor's wishlist. Both miss the point. The interesting question is the placement: where does this lesson sit on the PICRAT grid, was that placement deliberate, and is it the right cell for what the lesson is trying to do? The rubric below is built for exactly those three questions, on a single side of A4.
It is short on purpose. Long rubrics drift toward judgement. Short rubrics keep the conversation honest.
What this rubric is not
It is not a score. There is no total. There is no "Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement". A rubric that scores a lesson against an external scale of innovation is the wrong instrument for technology integration; it pushes lessons toward the top right of the grid (Creative Transform) regardless of whether CT is the appropriate cell for the day's intent. Some of the most defensible lessons in real classrooms sit in Passive Replace because the teacher made a deliberate, considered call to deliver direct instruction with the technology as a substitute for paper. PR is not a problem. PR by accident is.
It is also not a checklist of what the technology was. We do not care whether it was Padlet or Mentimeter or a Google Form. We care what the students were doing with it, and we care whether the placement was the teacher's choice. The rubric strips out everything else.
The rubric
One side of A4. Three sections. Tick boxes, not paragraphs. The whole thing is meant to be filled in during the lesson, not after, with the observer sitting at the back. The full PDF is downloadable below. The structure looks like this:
1. Place the lesson
2. Was the placement deliberate?
3. Was the placement appropriate?
Using it without crushing the teacher
Three things make the difference between a useful observation and a damaging one. None of them are about the form.
Sit at the back and fill it in during the lesson. Filling it in afterwards from memory loses the placement evidence. Filling it in at the front of the room (or with the teacher watching you fill it in) tilts the room into evaluation. The rubric is short enough to write while you are watching, and the teacher should know in advance that you will be using it.
Bring one question, not a verdict. The rubric ends on a debrief prompt for a reason. If you walk out with a placement and three opinions, the debrief becomes a verdict you are softening. If you walk out with a placement and one open question (often something like "did you choose IA, or did the lesson land there?"), the debrief becomes a coaching conversation. Coach is built for exactly this kind of dialogue, and a heads of department or digital lead can run the same conversation with the rubric in hand.
Treat unexpected placements as data, not failure. The most useful observations are the ones where the placement surprises the teacher. A teacher who thought the lesson was Interactive Amplify and is shown evidence it sat in Passive Replace has just learned more in five minutes than they would have learned in a CPD afternoon. The job of the observer is to make that conversation possible without making it punitive.
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1Brief beforehand Tell the teacher you'll be using the rubric, and why.
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2Sit at the back Out of sight of the class. Never the front.
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3Fill it in during While the placement evidence is still in front of you.
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4One question, not a verdict Walk out with the one question you want to take to the debrief.
The two traps to watch for
Both traps come from the same place: the assumption that there is a "good" cell. There isn't.
The first trap is rewarding Creative Transform. Observers' instincts pull toward CT lessons because they look like the high end of the grid. CT is harder to plan, harder to manage, and goes wrong more often. Most weeks, in most subjects, CT is the wrong cell. Marking a teacher down for not aiming there is an instruction to teach worse lessons.
The second trap is punishing Passive Replace. PR is the most common cell in real classrooms because direct instruction with technology as a substitute for paper is often the right pedagogy. The question to ask is not "why are you in PR?" but "did you choose to be in PR?" If yes, that is a defensible lesson. If no, that is the start of a useful conversation.
Place the lesson before you judge the lesson.
What to do tomorrow
If you have an observation in your diary this week, download the rubric and take it in. Tell the teacher what you are using and why. Sit at the back. Fill it in during, not after. Walk out with one question, not three.
If you would rather see how the lesson sits without observing it live, drop the lesson plan into Review: it classifies the lesson against PICRAT, surfaces the strengths, flags the weaknesses, and suggests one practical next step. It is not a substitute for sitting at the back, but it is a useful pre-read. For the debrief itself, Coach walks the conversation with the teacher, asking focused questions and helping them move from instinctive choices to intentional ones.
If your school is using the TILP framework, the rubric drops straight into the technology integration line of an observation; it does not replace TILP, it sharpens the part of TILP that asks about technology.
Andy Perryer is the global head of digital learning 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. This rubric is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence: share, adapt, print, embed, with attribution to picrat.com.