Three Grade 6 (Year 7) English teachers are running a 40-minute lesson on persuasive writing. All three open the same Word document with the same instructions on it. By the end of the period the lessons sit in three different cells of the PICRAT grid. The technology never changed. The teaching did.

RAT is the framework's name for that movement across the columns. It asks one question: what is the technology doing for the lesson?

Replace lesson on iPad An iPad screen showing a typed Word document titled Persuasive Paragraph. Plain body text, no annotations, no collaboration features. The footer shows a word count. The document only carries the task. Persuasive Paragraph 112 words · saved
RReplace
A typed paragraph. The document only carries the task.
Amplify lesson on iPad The same persuasive-writing document, now annotated. Two yellow comment markers in the right margin. A red strikethrough on one phrase. A blue insertion marker on another. Footer shows three comments and a recent edit by Mr Patel. Persuasive Paragraph 3 3 comments Last edit · Mr Patel · 2 min ago
AAmplify
Same paragraph plus comments, tracked changes, and an overnight voice note.
Transform lesson on iPad The same document, now live and co-authored with a partner class in another town. Header shows a green LIVE badge and four collaborator avatars. Two coloured cursors appear mid-text with selection highlights from co-authors. A green PUBLISHED footer indicates the piece is live to the school newsletter for 28 readers. Persuasive Paragraph LIVE +2 PUBLISHED School newsletter · 28 readers
TTransform
One piece, co-written live with a partner class in another town.
The same persuasive-writing document, taught three different ways. The technology never changed.

Replace

The first teacher pulls up the document, and the class types their persuasive paragraph into it. They print at the end. The Word doc has only carried the task. Lined paper would have carried it just as well and asked the same of the students. R is the placement.

R is what most lessons need most weeks. A vocabulary recap on a Tuesday afternoon, a retrieval starter, a short reading task: for these, the technology adds nothing the lesson uses, and that is the right placement. R is a deliberate choice, and it is worth being honest about whether you made it.

Amplify

The second teacher opens the same document and sets it to comment-only mode. Each student drafts their paragraph. The class then swaps documents in pairs and leaves three margin comments on a partner's draft, marking the strongest sentence and the weakest one. The teacher leaves a voice comment overnight on every document.

The artefact is the same Word doc and the task is the same paragraph. What the technology adds is the feedback, and the lesson uses it: thirty drafts, ninety peer comments, thirty teacher voice notes, all in one place for the students to act on by the morning. A is the placement. The students are now reasoning with their own writing, not just producing it.

(A note on the activity axis. In all three lessons the students spend most of the time writing their own piece, so the row is Creative throughout. PICRAT places this lesson at CA: Creative Amplify.)

Transform

The third teacher rebuilds the lesson. The same Word document is now shared with a partner class in another town. The two classes are writing one persuasive piece together, in real time, with sections assigned to teams that mix both schools. They publish it in the school newsletter at the end of the period. The artefact has a real readership and a deadline.

That lesson sits in T. It is a different kind of activity: one piece shaped, as it is written, by people this class could not otherwise work with. The newsletter readers on their own would only make it Amplify. Take the technology away and there is no such activity.

The single test

Could I swap this technology for something else and ask the same of my students?
Yes, and nothing would be lost. Replace.
Yes, but the lesson would lose something it uses. Amplify.
No. There would be no such activity. Transform.

Run the test on any lesson with technology in it. The answer is usually obvious within ten seconds, and it is the placement.

Pair RAT with PIC

The R/A/T column tells you what the technology is doing for the lesson. The P/I/C row tells you what the students are doing while it is happening. PICRAT is what you get when you ask both questions at once. The PICRAT grid is a 3x3 because the column you might know from SAMR is one half of the framework, and the activity row is the other.

The pedagogy is the variable.

Same technology, different teaching, different cell. The framework names what the tool can do. The teaching decides which of those things actually happens.

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. The Replace, Amplify, Transform axis was first proposed by Joan Hughes (RAT, 2002).