This is the introduction to Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. The different taxonomical levels can be viewed individually via the navigation bar or below this introduction as embedded pages.

Synopsis:

This is an update to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy which attempts to account for the new behaviours and actions emerging as technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy describes many traditional classroom practices, behaviors and actions, but does not account for the new processes and actions associated with Web 2.0 technologies, info-whelm (the exponential growth in information), increasing ubiquitous personal technologies or cloud computing.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy isn't about the tools or technologies rather it is about using these to facilitate learning. Outcomes on rubrics are measured by competence of use and most importantly the quality of the process or product. For example. Bookmarking a resource is of no value if the resource is inappropriate, invalid, out of date or inaccurate.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy lends itself to problem and project based learning where the student must work through the entire process of development and evaluation. The 21st Century Fluency Projects 6D model for Solution Fluency is an excellent example of how to work through the project or problem based learning frame work.

Key Resources

bloom's Digital taxonomy v3.01.pdf

blooms elluminate.pdf

TaxonomiaBloomDigital.pdf

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy - Quick Sheets.

The Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Quick Sheets are resources I have created as a quick and easy summary of the six different taxonomic levels of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. They define the different taxonomic levels, provide the Digital Taxonomy Verbs with some possibilities for classroom use.

Bloom's quicksheets.pdf

Introduction and Background:

Bloom's Domains of learning

In the 1956, Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist working at the University of Chicago, developed his taxonomy of Educational Objectives. His taxonomy of learning objectives has become a key tool in structuring and understanding the learning process.

He proposed that learning fits into one of three psychological domains (see below illustration 1):

• the Cognitive domain – processing information, knowledge and mental skills.
• the Affective domain – emotions, attitudes and feelings.
• the Psychomotor domain – manipulative, manual or physical skills.

Benjamin Bloom is best know for, Bloom's Taxonomy which examines looks at the cognitive domain. This domain categorizes and orders thinking skills and objectives. His taxonomy follows the thinking process.

The Cognitive Domain - Bloom's Taxonomy

This categorized and ordered thinking skills and objectives. His taxonomy follows the thinking process. You can not understand a concept if you do not first remember it, similarly you can not apply knowledge and concepts if you do not understand them. It is a continuum from Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) to Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Bloom describe each category as a gerund. They are arranged below in increasing order, from lower order to higher order.

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy

In the 1990's, a former student of Bloom, Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl, revised Bloom's Taxonomy and published this- Bloom's Revised Taxonomy in 2001. Key to this is the use of verbs rather than nouns for each of the categories and a rearrangement of the sequence within the taxonomy. They are arranged below in increasing order, from Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) to Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy Sub Categories

Each of the categories or taxonomic elements has a number of key verbs associated with it.

Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS)

• Remembering - Recognising, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding
• Understanding - Interpreting, Summarising, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying
• Applying - Implementing, carrying out, using, executing
• Analysing - Comparing, organising, deconstructing, Attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating
• Evaluating - Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, Experimenting, judging, testing, Detecting, Monitoring
• Creating - designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making

Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

The elements cover many classroom activities and objectives but they do not address the new objectives presented by the emergence and integration of Information and Communication Technologies in to the classroom and the lives of our students.

This revision is fundamentally based on the revised taxonomy proposed by Anderson et al, but is more inclusive of digital technologies and digital cognitive objectives.

Bloom's as a learning process.

Bloom's Taxonomy in its various forms represents the process of learning. It has been simplified in some case like the Three Story Intellect (Oliver Wendell Holmes and Art Costa), but it still essentially represents how we learn.

Before we can understand a concept we have to remember it

Before we can apply the concept we must understand it

Before we analyse it we must be able to apply it

Before we can evaluate its impact we must have analysed it

Before we can create we must have remembered, understood, applied, analysed, and evaluated.

Some people may argue about that you do not require some of the stages for each and every task, action or process; some too may argue about the necessity to reach the creation level for all activities. This is the choice of the individual.

Is it important where you start? Must I start with remembering?

I don't think it is. The learning can start at any point, but inherent in that learning is going to be the prior elements and stages.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Summary Map

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy and Collaboration.

In the Diagram above, Collaboration is included as a separate element as well as some elements being shared. Collaboration can take many forms (see above) and value of the collaboration can vary hugely. This is often independent of the mechanism used to collaborate. Also collaboration is not an integral part of the learning process for the individual, you don't have to collaborate to learn, but often your learning is enhance by doing so. Collaboration is a 21st Century skill of increasing importance and one that is used throughout the learning process. In some taxonomic levels the collaboration verbs are included as an element of Bloom's Digital taxonomy and in others its is just a mechanism which can be use to facilitate higher order thinking and learning.

Collaboration is not a 21st Century Skill, it is a 21st Century Essential.

In a recent blog post from the official google blog, Google identified the following as key traits or abilities in 21st Century Employees:

“... communication skills. Marshalling and understanding the available evidence isn't useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.”

“... team players. Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need to work well together and perform up to the team's expectations. ”

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/our-googley-advice-to-students-major-in.html

If we look at UNESCO's publication “The four pillars of Education, Learning: The Treasure within” Collaboration is a key element of each of the four pillars.

• Learning to know
• Learning to do
• Learning to live together
• Learning to be

(http://www.unesco.org/delors/fourpil.htm) [10]

So to prepare our students, our teaching should also model collaboration. A vast array of collaborative tools are available; wikis, classroom blogs, collaborative document tools,social networks, learning management systems - Many are available at no cost. If you have not yet tried them, look at:

• Wikis – wet paint and wiki spaces
• Classroom blogs – edublogs, classroomblogmeister, blogger, WordPress
• Collaborative document tools – Google documents, zoho documents, icloud
• Social Networks – ning, facebook, twitter, instagram,
• Learning managements systems – Moodle, Blackboard, edmodo, Canvas, JoomlaLMS, SharepointLMS, Ning, LAMS
• Social bookmarking - Delicious, DIIGO, Digg, Reddit, Pinterest, StumbleUpon

These tools are enablers of collaboration, and potentially enablers of 21st century teaching and learning.

Remembering

While the recall of knowledge is the lowest of the taxonomic levels it is crucial to learning. Remembering does not neccesarily have to occur as a distinct activity.

For example. The rote learning of facts and figures.

Remembering or recall is reinforced by application in higher level activities.

This element of the taxonomy infers the retrieval of material. In a digital age, given the vast amount of information available to us it is not realistic to expect students to remember every fact or figure. However, it is crucial that students can use digital means to find, record, organise, manage and retrieve the important resources they need. This is a key element given the growth in knowledge and information.

The digital additions and their justifications are as follows:

• Bullet pointing - This is analogous with listing but in a digital format.
• Highlighting – This is a key element of most productivity suites, encouraging students to pick out and highlight key words and phrases is a techniques for recall.
• Bookmarking or favouriting – this is where the students mark for later use web sites, resources and files. Students can then organise these.
• Social networking – this is where people develop networks of friends and associates. It forges and creates links between different people. Like social bookmarks (see below) a social network can form a key element of collaborating and networking
• Social bookmarking – this is an online version of local bookmarking or favourites, it is more advanced because you can draw on others bookmarks and tags. While higher order thinking skills like, collaborating and sharing, can and do make use of these skills, this is its simplest form - a simple list of sites saved to an online format rather than locally to the machine.
• Searching or “googling” - Search engines are now key elements of students research. At its simplest for (here) student are just entering a key word or phrase into the basic entry pane of the search engine. This skill does not refine the search beyond the key work or term.

Key Terms - Remembering:

Recognising, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming,locating, finding, Bullet pointing, highlighting, bookmarking, social networking, Social bookmarking, favouriting/local bookmarking, Searching, googling,

Rubrics and resources

bookmarking rubric.pdf

delicious v2.pdf

Understanding

Understanding builds relationships and links knowledge. At this taxonomic level the students should understand the processes and concepts essentially they are able to explain or describe these. They can summarise and rephrase these into their own words.

There is a clear difference between remembering, the recall of facts and knowledge in its various forms like listing, bullet points, highlighting etc, and understanding. One only has to look at the young child who can count from 1 to 10 but can not tell you how many fingers you are holding up. Or the student who can recite for you the first 20 elements of the periodic table in sequence but can not tell you about each or relate their position in the table to the number of electrons in the outer shell and from there explain the behaviour of the element. This Understanding is building relationships and constructing meaning

The following are some of the key terms for this aspect of the Taxonomy.

The digital additions and their justifications are as follows:

• Advanced and Boolean Searching - This is a progression from the previous category. Students require a greater depth of understanding to be able to create, modify and refine searches to suit their search needs.
• Blog Journalling – This is the simplest of the uses for a blog, simply a student “talks” “writes” or “type” a daily or task specific journal. This show a basic understanding of the activity report upon. The blog can be used to develop higher level thinking when used for discussion and collaboration.
• Categorising & Tagging – digital classification - organising and classify files, web sites and materials using folders, using Del.ico,us and other similar tools beyond simple bookmarking. This can be organising, structuring and attributing online data, meta-tagging web pages etc. Students need to be able understand the content of the pages to be able to tag it
• Commenting and annotating – a variety of tools exist that allow the user to comment and annotate on web pages, pdf files and other documents. The user is developing understanding by simply commenting on the pages. This is analogous with writing notes on hand outs, but is potentially more powerful as you can link and index these.
• Subscribing – Subscription takes bookmarking in its various forms and simple reading one level further. The act of subscription by itself does not show or develop understanding but often the process of reading and revisiting the subscribe feeds leads to greater understanding.

Key Terms - Understanding:

Interpreting, Summarising, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying, Advanced searching, boolean searching, blog journalling, tagging, categorising and tagging, commenting, annotating, subscribing

Rubric and resources

blogging rubric.pdf

threaded discussion rubric.pdf (This is a two part rubric with Evaluating in the more complex format)

advanced search rubric.pdf

Starter sheet - Adv Google search.pdf

Applying

"Alan looked at the beaker of clear liquid that had turned a light shade of red as he added litmus liquid. He recalled the facts about litmus paper which changes colour when exposed to an acid or a base (alkaline). He understood that the red change indicated an acid and blue a base. He applied this knowledge to discover what he could about the unknown liquid he had found in the old soft drink bottle. He quickly realised that the liquid was not just water and was unsafe to handle."

In this example a student applied facts and process he had learnt to a situation. Applying could be using a process, skill or set of facts.

The following are some of the key terms for this aspect of the Taxonomy.

Anderson and Krathwohl's taxonomy – Applying

3. Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing or implementing. Applying related and refers to situations where learned material is used through products like models, presentation, interviews and simulations.

The digital additions and their justifications are as follows:

• Running and operating - This the action of initiating a program. This is operating and manipulating hardware and applications to obtain a basic goal or objective.
• Playing – The increasing emergence of games as a mode of education leads to the inclusion of this term in the list. Students who successfully play or operate a game/s are showing understanding of process and task and application of skills.
• Uploading and Sharing - uploading materials to websites and the sharing of materials via sites like flickr etc. This is a simple form of collaboration, a higher order skill.
• Hacking – hacking in its simpler forms is applying a simple set of rules to achieve a goal or objective.
• Editing – With most media's, editing is a process or a procedure that the editor employs.

Rubrics and resources

wiki editting rubric v2.pdf

collaboration rubric.pdf using elluminate etc

Skype rubric.pdf also evaluating element

iwb_use_rubric.pdf Teachers

IWB taxonomy - students.pdf

googlemaps rubric.pdf

starter sheet - googlemaps.pdf

collaborative editing using online WP rubric.pdf

Analysing

"Alison sent an email to her classmates with the URL or web address of the google form she had created. The Google form asked her peers 10 basic questions about themselves. These included their age, ethinicity, sex, suburb they lived in and whether they had a mobile phone. She collected in the data (Raw facts and figures) and processed these into information (processed and organised data). She was able to present her findings as a series of graphs including a pie graph for sex, and a histogram or bar graph for age, and as a map showing the local suburbs and the number of her peers in each. She has linked the data in the form, spreadsheet and graph."

Alison has applied a process to develop a google form to collect information. Once the information is collected she has processed the data into a graphical format and is able to organise, structure and compare the information she has processed. She has selected suitable graphs and mode of presentation based on the data types - continuous and discontinuous data. She has used a variety of technologies to enable her to collect, process (structure and organise) and compare her results.

The following are some of the key terms for this aspect of the Taxonomy.

• Comparing
• Contrast
• Organising
• Deconstructing
• Attributing
• Outlining
• Finding
• Structuring
• Integrating

Anderson and Krathwohl's taxonomy – Analysing

4. Analysing: Breaking material 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.

The digital additions and their justifications are as follows:

• Mashing - mash ups are the integration of several data sources into a single resource. Mashing data currently is a complex process but as more options and sites evolve this will become an increasingly easy and accessible means of analysis
• Linking – this is establishing and building links within and outside of documents and web pages.
• Reverse-engineering - this is analogous with deconstruction. It is also related to cracking often with out the negative implications associated with this.
• Cracking – cracking requires the cracker to understand and operate the application or system being cracked, analyse its strengths and weaknesses and then exploit these.

Rubrics and Resources:

starter sheet - google forms.pdf

Evaluating

"Olivia read through the comments left on the project blog by her classmates and the students in Franklin County High School. The original post on the effect of technology on the classroom had drawn many responses. Some were positive and some were negative. She read each one and considered whether or not she should approve them. She evaluated the points they put forward, the language and tone they are written in, the possibility that they could be misconstruded or offer offense, judging the worth of the comments."

Blogs are powerful tools for learning. They provide a medium with which to comment and critique. In this example Alision is evaluating the comments in the moderation process. She is essentially critiquing, judging, checking and monitoring. The students who post comment to the posts are also evaluating the post or the reply submitted.

The following are some of the key terms for this aspect of the Taxonomy.

• Checking
• Hypothesising
• Critiquing
• Experimenting
• Judging
• Testing
• Detecting
• Monitoring

The digital additions and their justifications are as follows:

• Blog/vlog commenting and reflecting - Constructive criticism and reflective practice are often facilitated by the use of blogs and video blogs. Student commenting and replying to postings have to evaluate the material in context and reply to this.
• Posting – posting comments to blogs, discussion boards, threaded discussions are increasingly comment elements of students daily practice. Good postings like good comments are not simple one line answers rather they structured and constructed to evaluate the topic or concept.
• Moderating – This is high level evaluation, the moderator must be able to evaluate a posting or comment from a variety of perspectives, assessing its worth, value and appropriateness.
• Collaborating and networking – Collaboration is an increasing feature of education. In a world increasingly focused on communication, collaboration, leading to collective intelligence is a key aspect. Effective collaboration involves evaluating the strengths and abilities of the the participants and evaluating the contribution they make. Networking is a feature of collaboration, contacting and communicating with relevant person via a network of associates.
• Testing (Alpha and Beta) – Testing of applications, processes and procedures is a key element in the development of any tool. To be an effective tester you must have the ability of analyse the purpose of the tool or process, what its correct function should be and what its current function is.
• Validating – With the wealth of information available to students combined with the lack of authentication of data, students of today and tomorrow must be able to validate the veracity of their information sources. To do this they must be able to analyse the data sources and make judgements based on these.

Key Terms - Evaluating:

Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing, detecting, monitoring, (Blog/vlog) commenting, reviewing, posting, moderating, collaborating, networking, reflecting, (Alpha & beta) testing, Validating.

Rubrics

Skype rubric.pdf also applying element

validating rubric.pdf

2 threaded discussion rubric.pdf (This is a two part rubric with understanding in the simpler format)

Creating

"The concept was detailed and the outcomes clearly identified. The storyboard was constructed and transitions, timing and scene detailed. The pictures were taken and the music sourced. Ali and Kendall uploaded the content to Animoto, the online video tool, and structured the product, adding text and transitions to illustrate their message in the 30 second timeframe they had. Applying the processes they had learnt earlier. They ran and reran the clip, evaluating the impact of their message, modifying the sequence and judging the changes they had made. Finally satisfied they published to the blog the clip they had designed, constructed, directed and produced."

Creativity involves all of the other facets of the taxonomy. In the creative process the student/s, remembers, understands & applies knowledge, analyses and evaluates outcomes, results, successes and failures as well as processes to produce a final product.The following are some of the key terms for this aspect of the Taxonomy.

• Designing
• Constructing
• Planning
• Producing
• Inventing
• Devising
• Making

The digital additions and their justifications are as follows:

• Programming - Whether it is creating their own applications, programming macros or developing games or multimedia applications within structured environments, students are routinely creating their own programs to suit their needs and goals
• Filming, animating, videocasting, podcasting, mixing and remixing – these relate to the increasing trend and availability of multimedia and multimedia editing tools. Students frequently capture, create, mix and remix content to produce unique products.
• Directing and producing – to directing or producing a product, performance or production is a highly creative product. It requires the student to have vision, understand the components and meld these into a coherent product.
• Publishing – whether via the web or from home computers, publishing in text, media or digital formats is increasing. Again this requires a huge overview of not only the content being published, but the process and product. Related to this concept are also Video blogging – the production of video blogs, blogging and also wiki-ing - creating, adding to and modify content in wikis. Creating or building Mash ups would also fit here

Key Terms - Creating:

designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making, programming, filming, animating, Blogging, Video blogging, mixing, remixing, wiki-ing, publishing, videocasting, podcasting, directing/producing, creating or building mash ups

Rubric and resources

Publishing -podcasting rubric.pdf

digital publishing rubric.pdf

starter sheet - voicethread.pdf