Three 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. Same task as a paper worksheet. Persuasive Paragraph 112 words · saved
RReplace
A typed paragraph. Same task as the paper version, with the keyboard.
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. 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
A live, co-authored piece, published to an audience outside the room.
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 done what a sheet of lined paper would have done. Same task, same outcome. 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 functional, and that is the right placement. R is a deliberate choice for some lessons and a missed opportunity for others, which is why R lessons need to be honest about which they are.

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. The lesson is doing things paper cannot do at this speed: thirty drafts, ninety peer comments, thirty teacher voice notes, all visible in one place by the morning. A is the placement. The technology has amplified what was possible without it. The students are now reasoning with their own writing, not just producing it.

(That last sentence is also where the activity axis comes in. The students have moved from Passive to Interactive. PICRAT places this lesson at IA: Interactive Amplify.)

Transform

The third teacher rebuilds the lesson. The same Word document is now a co-authored piece for the school's online newsletter. The class is writing one persuasive piece together, in real time, with sections assigned to teams. They publish at the end of the period. The audience is the school. The artefact has a real readership and a deadline.

That lesson sits in T. The document is no longer a stand-in for paper. A paper version of this lesson would not run in 40 minutes. The students are writing for an audience the lesson would not otherwise have, and the technology is what makes the audience possible.

The single test

Could the lesson have happened without the technology?
Yes, identically. Replace.
Yes, but worse, slower, or smaller. Amplify.
No, the lesson cannot run on paper in the time available. 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 the 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. The Replace, Amplify, Transform axis was first proposed by Joan Hughes (RAT, 2002).