Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

Excellent reference from Andrew Churches Bloom's Digital Taxonomy http://bit.ly/nmHptaless than a minute ago via Visibli Favorite Retweet ReplyVicki Davis
coolcatteacher

This tweet from Vicki Davis led me to an extensive article by Andrew Churches updating Bloom's taxonomy for the 21st century, and to explicitly include Web 2.0 tools.

The first thing that I really liked was Churches's emphasis on collaboration.  One of his sections is titled "Collaboration is not a 21st century skill, it is a 21st century essential."  I think a lot of the classroom techniques we have been learning this summer emphasize collaboration in the classroom, but assessment is largely solo.  This sends the message to students that its okay to work together, but that at the end of the day you are being judged on your own.  However,  the ability to work in a group is an essential skill.  It is important to remember this for assessments and include collaboration and the ability to collaborate as part of assessment. 

The main reason I really liked this article is because Church went through the different levels of Bloom's taxonomy and linked the level with different digital tools.  This is probably totally unnecessary for teachers use to working with Bloom's taxonomy and with digital tools, but for a newbie like me it was very helpful.  It helped me to understand both Bloom's and digital tools better.  For example, knowledge can be demonstrated by collecting information from the internet.  Understanding can be demonstrated by creating a blog post.  Application can be demonstrated when students contribute to and edit a wiki page.  Analysis can be demonstrated when students collect data using google forms and analyze and present that data.  Evaluation can be demonstrated when students moderate a digital debate.  Creating can be demonstrated when students make a voicethread.  These are just a few examples - the nice thing about this article is that he gives a ton of examples and grading rubrics to evaluate whether student's are reaching the desired stage. 

One thing I really liked about reading this article - thanks to TIE558 and RLR503, I was actually familiar with many of the programs he mentioned, which would not have been the case a month ago.  This article is two years old, and I am curious how out-of-date it is already.