PICRAT vs SAMR: the key differences, and which to use when.

If you squint, PICRAT and SAMR look like the same model. Both have letters. Both describe how technology can do something fancier than just replace a pen. Both get drawn on flipcharts in INSET days. The first time I saw PICRAT I assumed it was a rebrand.

It isn't. The two models answer different questions, and the one PICRAT asks is the one teachers actually have to deal with when the bell rings. This piece is the long answer to a short question teachers ask me a lot: which one should I be using?

A quick recap of SAMR

SAMR is Ruben Puentedura's model, and for a long stretch of the 2010s it was the default vocabulary of technology integration. It's a four-rung ladder that describes how a piece of technology changes the task.

• Substitution. The tech does exactly what the old method did. Kids type their essay instead of writing it.
• Augmentation. The tech does the old thing with a small improvement. Spellcheck. Word count. Automatic page numbering.
• Modification. The task itself is redesigned. The essay becomes a shared document with peer comments.
• Redefinition. The task is something you couldn't have done without the tech. The essay becomes a podcast distributed to a real audience.

Laid out like that it's perfectly sensible, and when SAMR arrived it was a real step forward. For the first time, teachers had a shared vocabulary for the idea that using a computer isn't automatically a win. A whole generation of digital learning practice was built on the back of that single insight, and it deserves the credit.

The trouble starts the moment a teacher tries to use SAMR to plan tomorrow's lesson.

Where SAMR runs into real teachers

I have sat in rooms where two experienced teachers argued for twenty minutes about whether a Google Doc with peer feedback is Augmentation or Modification. In neither case did any child learn anything as a result of the argument. The problem isn't the idea behind SAMR, which is fine. The problem is that the middle two rungs are defined in a way almost nobody can apply consistently.

There's also a subtler issue. SAMR describes the task, not the classroom. It tells you what happened to the worksheet. It says nothing about what the children on the receiving end of the worksheet were actually doing. That's the gap PICRAT closes.

A quick recap of PICRAT

PICRAT was published in 2020 by Royce Kimmons, Charles Graham and Richard West in a paper called The PICRAT Model for Technology Integration in Teacher Preparation. They looked at about twenty existing models, including SAMR, and tried to build something with fewer edges to fall off.

It's a three-by-three grid with two axes.

The PIC axis (running up the side) is about the students. Are they Passive (consuming), Interactive (responding), or Creative (producing)?

The RAT axis (running across the bottom) is about the technology. Is it Replacing a non-tech version of the task, Amplifying it with something genuinely useful, or Transforming it into something that couldn't have happened otherwise?

Put the two together and you have nine cells. If you've taught a lesson with technology in it, the lesson sits in one of those nine cells.

The three real differences

Stripped to the bone, there are three things PICRAT does that SAMR doesn't. Or does, but in a way teachers can't reliably use.

1. PICRAT has three steps, not four.

RAT collapses SAMR's Augmentation and Modification into a single middle rung: Amplify. That isn't laziness. It's an admission that the distinction those two rungs were trying to draw was too fine-grained to survive contact with a classroom. Three buckets (same, better, different) is a call almost any teacher can make confidently. Four buckets (same, slightly better, restructured, fundamentally new) is a call almost nobody makes the same way twice.

2. PICRAT describes the students, not just the task.

The PIC axis is the bit of the model SAMR doesn't have an equivalent of. A lesson can be Redefinition on SAMR and still have the kids sitting silently watching a teacher demo. It can be Substitution on SAMR and have them fully engaged in a written peer-marking exercise. SAMR tells you what's happening on the projector. PICRAT tells you what's happening at the desks.

3. PICRAT is a two-dimensional grid, not a one-dimensional ladder.

This sounds like a shape argument but it matters. A ladder implies a climb: better is up, worse is down. Teachers come out of SAMR sessions feeling like Substitution is a failure state. A grid doesn't do that. A lesson in Passive-Replace is not a bad lesson. It might be the right lesson for that class on that topic. PICRAT makes room for that. SAMR quietly judges it.

Worked example: a Year 9 science lab report

Pick a lesson you've probably taught. Year 9, acids and bases titration, students need to write up the experiment afterwards.

Version one. They type the write-up in Word instead of writing it in their exercise book. SAMR calls this Substitution. PICRAT calls it Interactive-Replace. Both agree: the tech is doing nothing the pen couldn't have done. No disagreement so far.

Version two. They type it in Word, insert photos of their actual apparatus from their phones, and the word processor runs a grammar check as they write. SAMR users start to disagree here. Is inserting photos Augmentation or Modification? Depends who you ask. PICRAT shrugs and says Interactive-Amplify. The task is the same lab report. The tech is adding real value. Move along.

Version three. They work in a shared Microsoft Word document in groups of three. Graphs are built live from a Forms dataset every group contributes to. They leave voice comments on each other's method sections. A teacher at a different school in the same trust drops in overnight and adds questions in the margins. SAMR users argue again. Is this Modification (restructured task) or Redefinition (couldn't have existed before)? That argument eats the rest of the meeting. PICRAT calls it Creative-Transform and everyone moves on to the next agenda item.

Same lesson, same three versions, two frameworks. One produces a quick placement the department can move past. The other produces a longer conversation, which is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes not what you have twenty minutes of break time for.

What SAMR got right, and where it sits now

I don't want to be unfair to SAMR. It did the hard work of moving the conversation beyond "is this tech good or bad?" to "what's this tech actually doing to the task?" That was a genuine step forward in 2010. PICRAT is standing on SAMR's shoulders.

The honest position, fifteen years on, is that PICRAT has absorbed the part of SAMR that was working. The RAT axis of PICRAT is a tidier, three-step version of SAMR's four-rung ladder, without the Modification-versus-Redefinition argument. On top of that, PICRAT adds the student axis SAMR never had. So whatever SAMR was doing for you, PICRAT does in a cleaner form, with more information included.

Side by side

Which one should you use?

If you're choosing a model from scratch, pick PICRAT.

It does everything SAMR was trying to do, in a form teachers can actually apply without a training session to settle the Augmentation-versus-Modification argument. It survives translation between subjects. It survives translation between primary and secondary. And it adds the piece SAMR was always missing: a description of what the students on the receiving end of the lesson are actually doing.

SAMR tells you what you did. PICRAT tells you what your students did.

The second question is the one that actually matters. A lesson can look impressive on SAMR and be a dead room. A lesson in Creative-Amplify can be buzzing. The model that spots the difference is the model worth using.

If your school is already deep into SAMR and teachers are using it well, you don't have to rip anything out tomorrow. PICRAT is the natural next step, not a repudiation of the work you've already done. Most teachers who've worked with SAMR pick up PICRAT in about ten minutes, because they already have the RAT half of the model in their heads. The only genuinely new idea is the PIC axis.

What to do next

Try it on a real lesson. PICRAT Suite's Analyse takes a short description of any lesson and places it on the grid in about two minutes. If you've been using SAMR, you'll see immediately where PICRAT adds detail SAMR was silent about. It's free.

Andy Perryer is a global leader of digital learning 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.