Bloom's

Welcome to an Investigation of

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy

By Joshua Coupal

What is Bloom’s Taxonomy?

• Developed by Benjamin Bloom in 1956, it is a hierarchical classification of Educational Objectives that are key to understanding the learning process.

• According to Bloom, learning occurs in three domains

Within the cognitive domain Bloom categorizes and orders thinking skills and objectives. It represents a continuum of Low Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) to High Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).

Bloom’s taxonomy was revised in 2001 by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl. Their revision included changing the noun descriptors of Bloom’s Taxonomy with verbs and a re-ordering of the High Order Thinking Skills placement of evaluating and creating. They also indicated sub categories that outline the activities students engage in at each level of the hierarchy.

According to Andrew Churches, “the revised version still doesn’t address the objectives, processes, and actions, produced from information and communication technologies."

His solution?

Let's put it in perspective.

Who Are the Students We Teach?

Students have changed significantly, beyond just their clothes, slang, and styles.

These students have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and other toys and tools for the digital age.

Today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.

Net-Generation

Digital-Generation

Author Marc Prensky names them "Digital Natives."

The native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games, and the internet.

What do the students want?

Who Are We?

Digital Immigrants

We as digital immigrant instructors speak an outdated language.

Our digital accent is present in many things that we do...

Printing out emails

Printing out a document in order to edit it

Bringing people physically to our computer to see an interesting website

The "did you get my email?" phone call

What can we give them?

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

An increasing influence on learning is the impact of collaboration in its various forms.

The taxonomy is not about the tools and technologies, it is about using these tools to achieve, recall, understanding, application, analysis, evaluation, and creativity.

In the context of the digital taxonomy, learning can start at any point but inherent in that learning is going to be the prior elements and stages.

Remembering

• lowest of the taxonomic levels but crucial to learning
• does not necessarily have to occur as a distinct activity (the rote learning of facts and figures)
• remembering or recall is reinforced by application in higher level activites

Anderson& Krathwohl: Remembering is when memory is used to produce definitions, facts or lists, or recite or retrieve material.

Key to remembering in the digital taxonomy is the retrieval of material.

The growth in knowledge and information means that it is impossible and impractical for the student and teacher to try and maintain all of the current relevant knowledge for their learning.

• On-line Quizes and Tests (Google Docs, Hot Potatoes)
• Definitions (Moodle Glossary)
• Bookmarking (Delicious)

Understanding

• builds relationships and links knowledge

Anderson & Krathwohl: Constructing meaning from different types of functions be they written or graphic.

• Boolean Searching (Google)
• Simple Blogging (Class Blogmeister)
• Categorizing and Tagging (Delicious)
• Commenting & Annotating (MS Word)
• Mind mapping (Mindmeister)

Applying

Anderson & Krathwohl: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing or implementing . Related and refers to situations where learned material is used through products like models, presentations, interviews and simulations.

• Uploading material (Flikr, websites, blogs)
• Editing (MS Word, Buzzword)
• Playing (35 Games, Yenka)
• Interview (Audacity)
• Presentation (Power Point, Voicethrea d)

Analysing

Anderson & Krathwohl: Breaking material or or concepts into parts, determining how the parts relate or interrelate to one another or to an overall structure or purpose. Mental actions include differentiating, organizing, and attributing as well as being able to distinguish between components.

• Relationship Mind Maps (Mindmeister)
• Graphing & Charts (Excel, Gliffy)
• Surveys & Checklists (Google Docs)

Evaluating

Anderson & Krathwohl: Making judgements based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.

• Bloggin/Vlogging (Class Blogmeister, Voicethread, Windows Movie Maker, iMovie)
• Collaboration and Networking (Wikispaces, Etherpad, Twitter)
• Commenting, moderating, reviewing, posting (Wikispaces, Etherpad, Twitter)
• Persuasive speech/essay (Audacity, Voicethread, Sound Recorder)

Creating

Anderson & Krathwohl: Putting the elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning or producing.

• Filming, Animating, videocasting, podcasting, mixing and remixing (Audacity, Windows Movie Maker, Voicethread)
• Programming (Scratch, Yenka)
• Animating (Animoto)

The Benefits of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

• Sees assessment information as opening up new and intriguing questions focused on improvement
• Is comfortable with failure because it can point ways to improvement
• Rewards risk-taking and experimentation
• Sees attention to student learning and the achievement of outcomes as a form of field research that is valued by the institution

Final Thoughts

• Devise new assessment practices more appropriate to ‘learning as collaboration and participation’.
• learning seen as more about collaboration and participation rather than about delivery
• This will also result in the use of a wider range of technology supported learning methods (blogs, wikis, personal digital collections etc). Such changes raise specific issues for assessment.

One issue concerns the balance of responsibility for assessment. Participation theory suggests that students share responsibility for assessment with their teachers.

Another issue is that as assessment methods become more innovative (for example a wiki rather than an essay), marking and grading will become more problematic.

C0llaboration is not a 21st Century skill...

It is a 21st Century essential!

Activity:

• Sign into www.delicious.com
• With the bookmarks provided, investigate possible websites and tools you could use in assessing outcomes and the possible level of learning you are targeting.
• In groups or individually discuss/consider the benefits and deficits of your tool.

1. Affective

2. Psycho-Motor

3. Cognitive

Essential in Bloom's digital taxonomy is the idea of collaboration.

Learning is enhanced by collaboration

"...it is a 21st century skill that facilitates

high order thinking and learning."

Churches

July 15, 2009