Friday, January 30, 2009

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy

Most educators have heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy and how he proposed that learning fit into one of three psychological domains – cognitive, affective and psychomotor.
Bloom’s Taxonomy moves from lower order thinking skills to high order thinking skills. The original taxonomy categories were:

  • Knowledge
  • Comprehension
  • Application
  • Analysis
  • Synthesis
  • Evaluation

Then in 2001 a revised taxonomy was developed by Lorin Anderson and D Krathwohl which listed the categories as:

  • Remembering
  • Understanding
  • Applying
  • Analyzing
  • Evaluating
  • Creating

Recently I found an article about Bloom’s Taxonomy in the digital world from an educator named Andrew Churches. Briefly outlined, this is how Andrew sees teachers using technology with the revised taxonomy in the digital world.

  • Remembering – retrieval of information
  • Digital World – bulleting to mark key words, bookmark websites, social bookmarking or Googling

  • Understanding – interpreting, summarizing, paraphrasing, comparing
  • Digital World – refining basic searches, Blog journaling, Twittering, categorizing, commenting / annotating files

  • Applying – implementing using information and executing tasks
  • Digital World – initiating a program, operating / manipulating hardware and applications, gaming technology, uploading and sharing of materials on sites such as Flickr, editing Twitters or blog journals

  • Analyzing – comparing, organizing, structuring and integrating
  • Digital World – mash ups (several data sources melded into single usable information), links within documents and webpages, validating information found on the web, making judgments about found information, tagging, meta-tagging

  • Evaluating – hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing and monitoring
  • Digital World – blog commenting and reflecting, posting threaded discussions, moderating blogs, effective collaboration that involves evaluating the strengths and abilities of participants, evaluating the contributions other make, testing is a key component: analyze the purpose of a tool or process, analyze and evaluate data sources and make judgments

  • Creating – designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising and making
  • Digital World – Programming, filming, animating, videocasting, podcasting, mixing and remixing to create unique products, directing and producing, publishing, video blogging and building, compiling mash ups and at the highest level creating a program application or developing a game

This is an excellent article to assist teachers as they implement these digital tools into their curriculums. Included in Andrew Churches’ article are more detailed examples for each category and scoring rubrics.

Check out these links:
Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy - http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/bloomrev/index.htm
Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Digital World - http://www.openeducation.net/2008/04/11/blooms-taxonomy-and-the-digital-world/
Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (PDF) http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/bloom%27s+Digital+taxonomy+v2.12.pdf

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