I’m finding the SAMR model (Substitution - Augmentation - Modification - Redifinition) to be very practical. As I thought through the various class activities for today’s blog, figuring out exactly where to classify them was more challenging that I thought it would be.
I kept wanting to “dress up” S and A activities; had to remind myself of the caveat that there’s nothing wrong with using “Substitution” or “Augmentation” if it’s what’s appropriate for the task!
So, without further ado, my class activities illustrating each level of the SAMR Model:
Substitution
The clearest example of Substitution -- technology acting as a direct tool substitute with no functional improvement -- at least in my class, is using my SMART Board to do the vocabulary review games available at the Sadlier-Oxford website. There’s hangman, concentration, a crossword puzzle, and a few others. The students like being able to come up to drag-and-trop the letters, but it gets old very quickly. When used this way, the SMART Board quickly moves from the sublime to the ridiculous, as an expensive projector bulb sacrifices precious life hours on a game that can be played just as well with pencil and paper!
Augmentation
A searchable eText seems like a good example of technology acting as a direct tool substitute, but with functional improvement. When my AP English Literature & Composition class spends several weeks in small groups researching a particular work of literature through the “lens” of a specific school of literary criticism, a searchable eText transforms what used to be painstaking laborious work onto a complete breeze! The Mythological/Archetypal group, for example, is looking for key symbols, such as the "snake" or "serpent". Rather than spending hours re-reading each page, hoping to catch every mention, they simply give a search command to the eText reader and start following the results. This way, they can start analyzing results immediately, putting the bulk of their time into higher-level thinking skills rather than dumb monkey work.
Modification
The iClickers that I pull out a several times per month feel like a good fit for technology that allows for significant task redesign. I often use them with a set of hybrid quiz/discussion springboard PowerPoint slides. We alternate between actual quiz questions, for which there are actual right and wrong answers being automatically recorded, and discussion-starter questions to which they must respond, but they are only graded for submitting an answer. The students love the instantaneous feedback the iClickers provide. Immediately after a quiz question is closed, a graph pops up on the screen showing how many students gave which answers, and then the correct one is identified.
By the end of the quiz, all questions are scored, and each student knows how many (s)he received right and wrong. And they really love being polled as a method of inviting discussion. After the above quiz question (Dimmesdale asks Hester to think for him and be strong for him), I presented the following discussion question to my AP class: In a healthy relationship, the man will ask the woman to think for him and be strong for him (a) never, (b) rarely, (c) occasionally, (d) frequently, (e) often:
When the bar graph popped up, I invited my extremists to identify themselves and defend their positions. In this mode, they may choose to remain anonymous which is, I feel, is the real power of iClickers. While I could poll students the low-tech way -- having them hold up 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 fingers to indicate their level of agreement -- I find that the students value the option of expressing their true opinion without being known until the results are all in.Redefinition
The Nings I’ve set up for each of my classes are my best current example of technology allowing for the creation of new tasks previously inconceivable.
While many individual components of the Ning are simply Substitution or Augmentation -- such as my posting of homework assignments and handouts -- the “sum total” of a Ning is far greater than just the sum of its parts. 
At the beginning of the year, blogging seemed like just a slightly different way to do the “same old thing” -- hammer out an essay.
But through the year, as students have shared drafts, commented with praise and critique, participated in asynchronous discussions (which bring together students from both class periods), and community of co-learners is developing. 
My students are co-creators in the content, adding links, articles, photos, videos, etc. The Ning is like an expanding scrapbook of our shared journey.