Monday, February 9, 2009

Bloom Goes Digital

In "Rose Colored Glasses: Random Thoughts on Instructional design" JoAnn Gonzalez-Major, a professor of instructional design shares her companion piece for Churches' 2008 Digital taxonomy. It summarizes group of skills followed  using including examples and possible products followed by tools and techniques. For example, social networking tools such as Delicious is the knowledge/remembering skill level. This work puts the theory into practice. It is an organized way of going at thinking about higher level thinking skills, whether it be through spoken or visual texts on or off line. A utube video clip gives a compelling argument on technology use in the classroom. You can check the video out on utube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tahTKdEUAPk&eurl=http://jmajor.
midsolutions.org/?p=419. I will try to insert the video later.

While a sequence for thinking and learning has much appeal especially to those logical linear types, I am certain that I do not learn in order. I do not even write in order often beginning in the middle of a sentence and then filling in the missing pieces as they occur to me. Most of my students can often deal with the abstract issues while still struggling with the literal due to their limited English language. My mentor in the area of content area reading and writing used to ask, "If students learn in order, do they forget in the same order?" I would opt for creative assignments that demand students construct their own meaning and for issues that challenge students to stretch and share their thinking with others.   Varied and diverse tools available for making meaning open up exciting possibilities for learning. Messy problems without clear solutions and ambiguous issues force students to forge their own unique plans and seek appropriate tools and resources.   In my classes the internet is the first place students look, so to facilitate problem solving I would be well advised to know which tech tools are effective for specific purposes. Bloom's digital taxonomy in a la Jo- Ann Gonzalez-Major  provides another way to view available technical tools and techniques. 

Below is a diagram of the original Blooms taxonomy with its many revisions.  





3 comments:

  1. I totally agree with your statement:

    I would opt for creative assignments that demand students construct their own meaning and for issues that challenge students to stretch and share their thinking with others.

    Learning is messy! Sometimes hard for teachers to deal with seeing as we're so used to having "control" but the messy learning is so much more meaningful.

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  2. Hi Barbara,

    in the spirit of web 2.0, I share with you how to embed the video.

    From the youtube screen of your video, look for the embed code on the right.

    select and highlight it, then copy it.

    Go to a new blog post and look at the tabs on the upper right of your text box. Normally you write when it says "compose." but there is also a tab for "edit HTML."

    if you click on that tab and paste the embed code you copied earlier, you'll see the video when you hit preview or publish the post.

    I would have liked to include some screen captures for you, but I couldn't figure out how to paste them in the comment box. I think it's text only. . .doh!

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  3. Thank you Martin for the tip. As it turns out, google prevented me from downloading the video clip, so I assume it is copyrighted. I could not read the note written in Thai. However, thanks to your instructions, I see how to download a video on my Blog. -- Barbara

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