Another consideration for the innovator is being a highly reflective teacher, and having an awareness of their pedagogical beliefs. For example, Google Docs can help facilitate collaborative writing, but collaboration itself is not a new phenomenon in the classroom. A teacher who introduces this technology to her students is better placed if she facilitates working together before Google Docs is introduced. 

Finally, for the innovator is the ability to find help in their school if needed. Zhao et. al call this being a 'socially savvy' teacher. Often a small issue can be resolved by asking another staff member rather than waiting on an 'IT professional' to make their weekly visit to the school.
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The Innovation
The success of the technology being introduced relies on two conditions - the distance from the status quo and the dependence on other factors. The distance from the status quo considers both the values of the teacher, the pedagogical practice, and the existing technology. Aurasma is going to be more successful if the students are already familiar with ipads - this is an example of less distance between existing and new technology.

Dependence refers to the teacher relying on others outside of her authority to make the technology work, or technology beyond her control. Often there is only one Google Admin in the school, if they are busy but a teacher needs to reset a password, they are dependent and this can cause an issue. 

Of all of these domains, Zhao et. al considers the innovator the most important and I agree. I have found myself as an innovator - of which many innovations were successful - because of my IT proficiency and drive to support my existing pedagogy. However, I have also been very aware when my dependence on others, and lack of human and technological infrastructure has made an introduction so frustrating that I've changed approach. Something that I need to remember, and which I believe is an important lesson for IT leaders in schools, is Zhao's statement that IT integration needs to be a 'evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach' - steps not leaps!

Two models used for the assessing the quality of activities involving digital technology are SAMR (Substitute, Augment, Modify, and Redefine) and TPACK (Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge). Below are the explanations of each model. They both look at the overlap of technology and how we integrate (the pedagogy) of our programmes. 

Below is a simple self-explanatory comparison of the two models.

I'd like to try and introduce Aurasma into our MindPlus programme (gifted education). Our overarching theme for the conceptual development section is patterns, of which animal patterns will be the focus for the term. This is the first task that comes to mind...

Proposed task: ask each group of students to investigate a particular category of patterns (strength, order, beauty, survivability). Ask them to create a short presentation (video, slide etc) about what constitutes that category, what animal patterns fall into the category, how those animals utilise their patterns. 

Following this, students print out a range of animal patterns in their chosen category and create auras for each. First the category appears,then it goes into more depth about the animal and its particular pattern. Each group carries out this task.

The teacher then displays the animal patterns around the room. Students use the Aurasma app to then try and guess the animal and category of pattern before they Aurasma the images.

SAMR: I would consider this task to be a mix of modification and redefinition of a paper based task in a similar vein. Paper presentations with flaps that you lift up after you've guessed would get the same information across, but rule out video presentations. 

​TPACK:  When using the TPACK model to assess, I would find it difficult to distinguish between a complex pedagogical task, with high technology use, and deep content knowledge and something at the lighter end of the scale. I would consider this activity as achieving TPACK but not on a particularly deep level.

The augmented reality apps we tried out in class were Aurasma, Quiver, Anatomy 4D and Elements 4D. With Aurasma, once you've downloaded the app onto your phone, you follow or subscribed to creator of an aura you would like to view (in the video below the creators would be the newspaper company, Kellogs etc), then hold your phone camera over an image and witness an alternative image or video appear!

The app I played with using Google goggles was Google Cardboard -  a super low-cost alternative to virtual reality headsets. The video below gives a basic explanation of how it works.