Bloom's Taxonomy, Digitally Speaking

Many of us have used Bloom's Taxonomy, especially when we were just young whipper-snappers in undergraduate education classes. Few of us actually understood it before we got to the classroom, and, be honest, how many of you actually think about it when you are planning lessons? Having said that, it is a very relevant document in today's classroom, even having been originally created in the 1950's. In the 1990's, one of Bloom's students, Lorin Anderson, revised the document, using verbs instead of nouns.

In Andrew Churches' article "Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally," he brings to light how ICT skills fit into the revised Bloom's Taxonomy. Brilliant! I really feel that this article needs to be shown to all teachers and pre-service teachers. So much of technology integration is getting teachers to think, "How could this be done more efficiently and effectively using technology?" This article makes that process that much easier. It gives you great starting points. It can show you what you have already done and give you ideas on where to expand.



One activity that we'll be doing soon is having teachers take our standards and create a technology activity that would replace one or more of the suggested activities/lessons/assessments, yet produce the same desired results (I know, that's a big aha, but we need a place to start). Our plan was to then go back and show them how they fit into the ISTE Standards, which we'll still do, but we'll also show them the thinking skills in relation to Bloom's Taxonomy. I already know a couple of projects that easily fit into the taxonomy without the teachers focusing on it. As we always say here at the Tech Fridge, it's all about doing things "instead of." The digital version of Bloom's Taxonomy will give your teachers great examples of ways to easily integrate technology into their curriculum and hit all levels of thinking skills.