What is PICRAT? The simplest way to think about technology in teaching.

Picture this. You're a teacher. Someone somewhere has decided the school is "going digital." Maybe it's the laptops that arrived last term. Maybe it's a strategy document in your inbox. Maybe it's a head of department quietly suggesting you "use more tech." So you open Word, get the kids to type their essay into it instead of writing by hand, tick the digital box, and move on.

That's the trap. Using technology isn't the same as using it well. And until recently, the models we've had to help teachers think about the difference have often been a bit of a mess.

The whole argument of this piece, if I can get it out of the way up front, is that the right question isn't "how do I transform my teaching with technology". It's "what's one square away from where I am right now?" That's the move PICRAT makes possible, and it's the move the old models don't.

The problem with the old models

I've sat through a lot of presentations on technology integration over the years. Most end the same way: a teacher looking slightly baffled and quietly resolving to stick to what they know.

The best-known model is SAMR. Four rungs on a ladder: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition. Everyone understands Substitution (the kids are typing their essay in Word instead of writing it in a book). Almost nobody can tell you the difference between Augmentation and Modification. I'll give twenty pence to any teacher who can.

I once watched a keynote speaker try to explain SAMR using a Starbucks coffee analogy. He started with a plain espresso (Substitution), added milk (Augmentation), threw in some pumpkin spice syrup (Modification), and by the time he was supposed to be talking about Redefinition he'd lost track of where he was in his own analogy. He actually muttered "hang on" and asked the audience which bit came next. That was the moment I thought: if the expert on stage can't keep this straight, what hope does a classroom teacher have on a wet Tuesday morning?

TPACK has the same problem in a different outfit. It's a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles (Technological Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge, Content Knowledge) and seven named regions where they meet. It's excellent if you're writing a doctorate. Show it to a classroom teacher and watch the anxiety sweats start.

Enter PICRAT

PICRAT came out of a 2020 paper by Royce Kimmons, Charles Graham and Richard West, published in the CITE Journal. They looked at around twenty existing technology integration models: SAMR, TPACK, LoTi, TAM, TIM, TIP, RAT and more. They asked a sensible question: can we do better?

The answer they came up with is a three-by-three grid with two axes. Two questions, really. That's it.

The first axis: what are students doing with the technology?

• Passive. They are consuming. Watching a video, reading an e-book, listening to audio. Nothing wrong with that in the right context.
• Interactive. They are responding. Answering questions in a quiz, annotating a text, collaborating on a document.
• Creative. They are making. Building a presentation, composing music, producing a film, writing a programme.

The second axis: what is the teacher's use of technology doing, compared to how the lesson would have run without it?

• Replace. The tech is doing the same job the pen and paper would have done. Same task, different medium.
• Amplify. The tech is making the task more efficient, more engaging, or more accessible. Same task, better support.
• Transform. The task itself has changed. You could not have run this lesson without the technology.

Put the two axes together and you get nine cells. Any lesson you've ever taught with technology in it sits in one of them.

A worked example

Let me walk you through one, because the grid only really makes sense when you do.

Say you set an exit ticket in Microsoft Forms at the end of a lesson. A handful of multiple-choice questions to check what has stuck. Where are we on the grid?

Students are answering questions, so they are Interactive on the first axis. Not Passive (they're doing something), not Creative (they aren't making anything new). Easy.

On the second axis, ask yourself what the technology is actually adding. You could have run the same quiz on paper. Same questions either way. So you are in Interactive-Replace. Paper would have worked.

Now switch on automatic marking. You don't have to mark thirty forms. The data comes back instantly. You can spot misconceptions before the kids leave the room. The task hasn't changed, but the technology is doing real work. You've moved one square to the right. Interactive-Amplify.

One more move. Instead of a static form, set it as a conversation with an AI chatbot that probes each student's wrong answers and adapts its next question to what they got wrong. Now the task itself has changed. The students are having an individualised diagnostic conversation that could not have happened on paper. That's Interactive-Transform.

What this shows is the real point of PICRAT. It's not a competition to land in the top-right corner. It's a way to look at a single lesson, work out exactly where you are, and ask: what's the smallest realistic move I could make next week?

One step up or one step across

This is the line I come back to the most.

The scariest thing about the older models was the implicit demand that teachers leap from Substitution to Redefinition, or from "I just turned on the projector" to "we're running a global collaboration project with a school in São Paulo." Nobody does that. Nobody should do that. You'd be exhausted, the students would be overwhelmed, and the lesson would almost certainly be worse than it was.

PICRAT assumes you're already somewhere on the grid. The question is just: where, and what's one square away?

You move practice one step at a time.

It sounds obvious until you've sat in enough staffrooms watching good teachers freeze up because they've been told to "transform their practice." Give them a single square to move to and they'll almost always say yes.

What the grid doesn't tell you

A fair criticism of any model this simple is that it flattens things that matter. Where a lesson lands on PICRAT doesn't tell you whether the content was good, whether the pedagogy was sound, whether the students were actually learning. You can write a bad lesson in any of the nine cells.

That's fine. PICRAT is a reflection tool, not a lesson plan. It tells you what role the technology is playing, so you can decide whether that's the role you wanted it to play. The judgement about whether the lesson worked is still yours.

And because it's a reflection tool, it doesn't prescribe. Passive-Replace is not "bad." If the most efficient thing for a class is a well-produced video explanation followed by a worksheet, that's a perfectly honest lesson. The question PICRAT asks is whether you chose that, or whether you ended up there by default.

How to use it tomorrow morning

You don't need to print the grid. You don't need to run a staff meeting about it. Just ask yourself two questions this week, about one lesson you taught.

What were the students actually doing with the technology: consuming, responding, or making?

What would have happened if I'd taught this lesson without the technology: same task, easier task, or a completely different task?

That's it. Two questions. Thirty seconds. You've placed the lesson on the grid.

Then, and only then, the interesting question: could I move one square next time?

If you want a bit of structure around that, PICRAT Suite has a free tool called Analyse that walks you through those questions for any lesson and gives you back a classification plus a couple of suggestions for the next step. Takes about two minutes. If you'd rather start from the other end (say, "I need ideas for a Year 7 history lesson that sits in Creative-Transform"), Generate gives you a full three-by-three grid of activity ideas for any subject and age range.

Where PICRAT sits next to the old models

For completeness, the short version of how PICRAT relates to the frameworks that came before it.

PICRAT vs SAMR. PICRAT adds the student side of the ledger, which SAMR never had. The R-A-T axis is also a cleaner three-step version of SAMR's four steps, without the Augmentation-versus-Modification argument that has derailed every staff training session on the topic.

PICRAT vs TPACK. TPACK describes what teachers need to know. PICRAT describes what teachers and students are actually doing. Different jobs.

Compare all the main models side by side. SAMR, TPACK, TIM and the rest, with a short take on when each one earns its keep.

One last thing

The reason I've built my working life around PICRAT is that it's the only model I've ever seen a busy teacher, handed it cold on a Monday morning, can actually use the same day. Every other model I've tried to bring into schools needed a training session before anyone could apply it. PICRAT needs a napkin and a biro.

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.