Feb. 8, 09: How are my thoughts changing? (Connectivism, New Bloom's Taxonomy, Messing Around)

How are my thoughts changing...Hmmn. I think the main change has been the understanding that the digital world we live in today is more than new tools to do what we currently do in our professional and personal lives. Technology has become more than a tool to use in the classroom, the wired world can itself be a classroom for our students and us, professionally and personally. University podcasts, professional blogs and communities of online learners ... I'm still coming to grasps with the potential classroom at our fingertips and look forward to this course continuing to change my understanding of what this new digital classroom looks like and what it can do in a better way for us as teachers and for students.

As for this week's readings, I would like to write on Andrew Churches' article, Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally, as Bloom's Taxonomy has been so integral to teaching and student learning since its creation in 1950. To begin, overall I like the changes made in the revised 2001 Bloom's taxonomy by Lorin Anderson. See below (HOTS --> LOTS)...

creating
evaluating
analyzing
applying
understanding
remembering

I especially like the addition of a new category 'creating' at the top (most HOTS). I also like the renaming of the two bottom categories as I feel 'remembering' and 'understanding' are better key words/categories to get at the cognitive workings going on at these two levels than 'knowing' and 'comprehending'. Yet, I miss synthesis from the list. To synthesize, to combine various understandings into a new higher level understanding, is so important in today's world with the wealth of information available (thrown at us) to us daily. I would like to see seven levels and add 'synthesizing' on top of 'evaluating' and below 'creating' rather than replacing 'synthesis' with 'creating' as Anderson did. I feel without synthesis it's just information overload and/or unconnected bits without any production (creation) that meaningfully draws upon the wealth of information and knowledge available today.

My preferred revised Bloom's taxonomy

creating
synthesizing
evaluating
analyzing
applying
understanding
remembering

And while Andrew Churches (Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally) states that the revised 2001 Bloom's taxonomy does not "address the new objectives presented by the emergence and integration of Information and Communication Technologies into the classroom and the lives of our students" (p. 2) and so adds in verbs to identify and integrate Information and Communication Technologies into the revised 2001 Bloom's taxonomy, I believe this isn't necessary where the verbs added in are specific to a tool and not a thinking skill. We don't need a technology checklist of tools as in years past. Yet many of the verbs Churches adds in seem very much like tools or tool sets (googling, bullet pointing, twittering, subscribing, linking, blogging, wiki-ing, podcasting, etc.) and not thinking skills (locating, listing, explaining, comparing, reflecting, critiquing, etc.). For example, I feel, it's important for students to locate information (not neccesarily google information), for students to list things in an organized matter (not neccessarily through bullet pointing), for students to reflect (not necessarily through a blog). We need to not get caught up in each new technological advance (the tools) but to stay focused on key cognitive and metacognitive tools (the thinking/learning process).

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