the experience of students. Furthermore, some teachers may also assume that
students will be‘naturally intuitive’in accessing, navigating and working in the
digital elements of the e-Learning environment.- Teachers regard technology merely as a tool, rather than as way to revolu-
tionise their pedagogy.Interviews with key staff revealed thisfinding, sug-
gesting the notion of technology as a‘digital pencil’persists. In this sense,
technology has not been integrated into the fabric of the some teachers’thinking
about their work; rather, it remains‘out there’, as no more than a support for
‘business-as-usual’, thus resulting in minimal or limited pedagogical change. - While teachers understand the SAMR model, theyfind it challenging to get
beyond substitution.The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition
(SAMR) model (Puentedura 2013 ) provides a way of evaluating the degree of
technology integration, and level of learner engagement with tasks requiring
technology. At the lower levels of substitution and augmentation, learning is
merely enhanced using technology, whereas, at the higher levels of modification
and redefinition, transformative learning is made possible by technology. In an
online survey of Year Nine and Ten students who voluntarily completed the
survey (n= 88), 87.5% indicated that using a teacher made document was the
activity that they most likely completed on their devices. In contrast, 72.7%
indicated that creating new content was the activity they were least likely to
complete with their devices. Observation data recorded wide use among the
participant teachers of‘electronic worksheets’, the simple substitution of a paper
handout with one now on Google Classroom. There were, however, examples of
up-scale teaching, including students creating their own documents, making
Powerpoints, and creating Prezi presentations. For some teachers, however,
there is simply not enough time for the development of redefinition tasks, not to
mention unwillingness to take the risks associated with possible failure, should
radically new tasks go awry. - The implementation of blended e-Learning is variable. Observational data
recorded mixed use of classroom strategies, including overuse of devices and
non-use in one case. This may be what led some parents to suggest that the
implementation among teachers is inconsistent. One of their critiques was based
on their children’s feedback indicating teachers sitting through classes while
students worked quietly on tasks placed on Google Classroom. There was some
evidence of this in the observational data, including several examples of
front-of-the class teaching, despite the view of the parent focus group that such
teaching was not occurring (notwithstanding that such teaching approaches are
not desirable, if carried on for lengthy periods). In contrast, the best case
observed example reflected minimal teacher talk time, constant teacher move-
ment around class, the teacher checking in with the students, who were actively
completing a challenging exercise using devices, Google Classroom and the
Internet.
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