Six alternatives to SAMR
SAMR asks one question: how far has the technology changed the task? Every model below asks something different. None of them is wrong. They are tools for different jobs.
| Model | What it asks | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| TPACK | What does a teacher need to know about technology, pedagogy and content, and where do the three overlap? | Teacher training and curriculum design. It describes the teacher, not the lesson. PICRAT vs TPACK |
| RAT | Does the technology Replace, Amplify or Transform what was there before? | A quick three-step check. It is the foundation PICRAT builds on. PICRAT vs RAT |
| TIM | Which of five kinds of learning is happening, at which of five levels of integration? | Detailed observation in schools with time to train observers. Twenty-five cells is a lot to hold in your head. |
| Triple E | Does the technology Engage students in the learning goal, Enhance it and Extend it beyond the lesson? | Scoring one tool against one learning goal. |
| LoTi | Which of seven levels of teaching innovation has this classroom reached? | Tracking change across a school over years. Like SAMR, it is a ladder. PICRAT vs LoTi |
| PICRAT | What are the students doing (Passive, Interactive, Creative), and what is the technology doing (Replace, Amplify, Transform)? | Placing a single lesson in under a minute, without ranking it. What is PICRAT? |
I moved to PICRAT because it asks about the students and the technology in the same breath, and it is small enough to use in a corridor conversation. The rest of this page is for anyone making the same move. For a longer side-by-side, see technology integration models compared.
If SAMR is what you know
If you have spent the last decade thinking in SAMR, you do not need to start over. SAMR is in your bones, your scheme of work, and the language your department already shares. PICRAT keeps everything SAMR taught you and adds one more axis. The judgement you already make about the technology gives you the columns of the PICRAT grid. The other axis is the question SAMR was always missing: what are the students doing?
In my experience, the migration takes one INSET to brief and roughly half a term to settle. The translation is straightforward. What you already know about Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition tells you which column of the PICRAT grid a lesson lives in. PICRAT then asks you to add the row. Once that row is in your habit, you stop being surprised when two SAMR-Modification lessons turn out to be doing very different work.
What SAMR got right
The single best thing SAMR has done for classrooms is the placement instinct. A teacher who has used SAMR for any length of time stops asking 'is this lesson using technology?' and starts asking 'what is the technology actually doing for the lesson?' That move alone has helped a lot of teachers out of tool-led planning. Before SAMR, the edtech conversations I remember began with the app. After it, they began with the lesson.
The four levels are also good descriptions of the pedagogical move. Substitution: the technology does what paper would have done, with no functional change. Augmentation: same task, slight functional improvement (a spellcheck, a hyperlink). Modification: the task itself changes (collaborative editing, peer comments). Redefinition: the task could not have been set on paper at all (a published artefact for an audience outside the room).
None of that goes away. PICRAT names the same axis with three letters instead of four, but the underlying question is the same. Replace, Amplify, Transform map cleanly onto Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. The placement instinct that SAMR gave you is the one PICRAT depends on.
What SAMR was missing
What SAMR cannot tell you is what the students are doing.
Two SAMR-Modification lessons can be radically different lessons. A lesson where students sit and watch the teacher annotate a primary source on a shared document is Modification. A lesson where students each annotate their own primary source, exchange comments, and disagree in the margins is also Modification. The technology has done the same modifying work in both. The lesson has not.
PICRAT names that gap. The first lesson sits at Modification on SAMR and at Passive Amplify on PICRAT, because the student is watching. The second sits at Modification on SAMR and at Interactive Amplify on PICRAT, because the student is doing something with the content. Same rung on SAMR and the same column on PICRAT. Different rows.
The difference matters because it is where the learning either lands or fails to. Two lessons that look identical on a SAMR placement can produce very different work by the end of the period. A teacher reviewing a year of SAMR-Modification lessons can find that some of them barely moved the class while others did the heavy lifting. SAMR cannot explain why. PICRAT can.
The activity axis is the answer. Passive students consume. Interactive students respond. Creative students make. The PICRAT grid is what you get when you take SAMR's question about the technology and add the question 'what is the student actually doing while the technology does its work?'
The translation
The two frameworks line up on one axis. PICRAT keeps SAMR's pedagogical-move judgement intact and reads it across its three columns. Then it adds the rows, which SAMR does not ask about.
The mapping from SAMR levels to PICRAT columns is direct.
| SAMR level | PICRAT column | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Substitution | Replace | The technology only carries the task |
| Augmentation | Amplify | Same task, using something small the technology adds |
| Modification | Amplify | Same task, using collaboration or feedback the technology adds |
| Redefinition | Transform | Could not happen without the technology |
Two of those mappings need a comment. Augmentation is Amplify because the lesson uses something the technology adds, however small (a hyperlink students follow, a spellcheck they correct from). A feature nobody acts on does not count; then the technology only carries the task, and that is Replace. Modification is Amplify for most lessons; it is only Transform when the activity could not have happened without the technology. The honesty test is the swap test: could you swap the technology for something else and ask the same of students? If yes, it is Replace. If the lesson would lose something it uses, it is Amplify. If there would be no such activity, it is Transform.
Your existing SAMR judgements give you the R/A/T column. PICRAT then asks you to place the lesson on the P/I/C row as well.
A worked example
Grade 7 (Year 8) geography. The lesson is on flooding in the Mekong Delta. The teacher has 50 minutes and an iPad per pair.
In SAMR terms, the teacher pulls up an interactive map showing flood-risk data overlaid on satellite imagery. Students compare three regions, identify which is at highest risk, and write a paragraph justifying their answer in a shared document. The map is something paper could not provide. The collaboration on the shared document changes the task itself. SAMR places this at Modification, leaning towards Redefinition.
PICRAT places it differently. Students are doing something with the content (Interactive). The lesson uses a live data layer and a shared document that the technology adds to the same comparison task (Amplify, or Transform if the data layer is the lesson). The lesson sits at Interactive Amplify, with a leaning towards Interactive Transform.
Now move the lesson. The teacher rebuilds it as a recorded brief. Each pair records a 60-second piece-to-camera making a flood-risk recommendation to a regional planning team, with the data they used cited on screen. They watch each other's clips and vote on the most defensible argument.
On SAMR, that lesson is still Modification or Redefinition. The placement looks similar.
On PICRAT, the lesson has moved from Interactive Amplify to Creative Amplify. The column has not changed: the recording and the class vote are things the technology adds and the lesson uses, and an audience of classmates is Amplify. The row has changed: the student has moved from interacting with the data to producing an argument from it. Same lesson on the SAMR ladder looks unchanged. On the PICRAT grid, the move is visible.
What changes for you next term
Three practical shifts will land the migration.
First, when you place a lesson, ask both questions. SAMR's question is what is the technology doing. PICRAT adds: what are the students doing while it does it. The answer to one is rarely the answer to the other.
Second, when you observe a colleague, classify the activity first. The technology placement is usually obvious within thirty seconds. The activity placement takes the rest of the lesson to read. Most observation conversations get stuck on the technology because that is the easier of the two to discuss. PICRAT lets the harder question come first.
Third, treat the framework as a grid, not a destination. SAMR's structure is vertical, and the visual implication is that Redefinition is the goal. PICRAT is laid out as a grid, and the visual implication is that the right cell is the cell the lesson asks for. A Tuesday-afternoon vocabulary recap that lives in Passive Replace is doing its job. A Grade 11 (Year 12) essay that lives in Creative Transform might be the right move once a unit and overkill the rest of the time. The placement is a description. The judgement about whether to move it is a separate decision.
In my experience, the migration takes a single INSET, two weeks of grumbling, and then a noticeable shift in how lesson observations land. The grumbling is real. A grid is harder to draw on a whiteboard than a ladder. By half-term, the teachers I work with tend to prefer the grid.
If you want to test the translation on your own work, drop a recent lesson plan into Review. It will classify the lesson on PICRAT and surface the single move that would change its placement. You can then think back to where SAMR would have placed the same lesson and see whether the two judgements agree. If you would rather start from scratch, Generate will build a full 3x3 matrix of nine lesson ideas in your subject and year group, one per cell, so you can see the rows you would never have used in SAMR thinking.
The student is the axis SAMR is missing.
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. SAMR was developed by Ruben Puentedura.