Technology in the Classroom - Investigating Bloom's Taxonomy

This week my online technology class at Regis University did a comparison between the revised Bloom's Taxonomy and the new Digital Bloom's Taxonomy. I was intrigued by the new verbs that were introduced as part of this study. It made me reflect on how I could integrate some of these exciting changes into my classroom.

Being a third-grade teacher and looking forward to the introduction of, The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), testing Colorado will be introducing next year made me realize early on that my students needed to develop the computer knowledge and typing skills to be successful in completing these high-stake tests. I started the year off by having my students learn the process of logging on to a computer, conducting a search in the search bar, and bookmarking the site for later. Once my students were able to access the site, Free Typing Games.com, we started the process of learning the keyboard, two keys at a time. We have revisited this program each week in hopes that my students would be familiar enough with the keyboard to type without resorting to the hunt-and-peck method so many students their age rely upon. However, when researching the various digital bloom tools, I found that, although we have in fact been completing many of the various suggested activities, I can still do much more to help my students become acclimated to the digital world.

Developing a class blog to aid the students in their understanding of accessing yet another site, as well as requiring them to type information into that site will go a long way in encouraging them to work hard toward learning the keyboard. I thought about listing the site address in the blog site as well so students can access the lessons and post them to the blog to inform others of their progress. Comparing and encouraging each other in a class blog that is assessable to the class and their parents will allow them to share their progress with a larger audience.

Blogging is just another tool for students to incorporate into their growing knowledge of technolgy into their everyday life. Students need to become technologically aware at an earlier age, and it is incumbent of us as teachers to make sure they have the tools they need to be successful. PARCC is going to be a huge stumbling block for students who know nothing about typing and the keyboard. And, although learning to type can be exciting at first, it does lose its enjoyment after a while, sharing their successes in a classroom blog with their peers and parents may provide the incentive to keep working hard toward attaining their goal.

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy vs. Digital Bloom's Taxonomy

Similarities	Differences
Sub Categories	Secondary verbs are different
Key Terms	Relates to the use of technology in the classroom
Lower order to higher order
Revised to keep pace with the changing times
Primary verbs are the same
Remembering - Recognizing, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding Understanding - Interpreting, Summarizing, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying Applying - Implementing, carrying out, using, executing Analyzing - Comparing, organizing, deconstructing, Attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating Evaluating - Checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, Experimenting, judging, testing, Detecting, Monitoring Creating - designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making	Remembering - Bullet pointing, highlighting, bookmarking, social networking, Social bookmarking, favorite-ing/local bookmarking, Searching, Googling Understanding - Advanced searching, Boolean searching, blog journaling, twittering, categorizing and tagging, commenting, annotating, subscribing Applying - Running, loading, playing, operating, hacking, uploading, sharing, editing Analyzing - Mashing, linking, reverse-engineering, cracking, mind-mapping, validating, tagging Elevating - (Blog/vlog) commenting, reviewing, posting, moderating, collaborating, networking, reflecting, (Alpha & beta) testing Creating - programming, filming, animating, Blogging, Video blogging, mixing, remixing, wiki-ing, publishing, video casting, podcasting, directing/producing, creating or building mash ups
	The digital additions and their explanations are as follows: Bullet pointing – This is analogous to 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 technique for recall. Bookmarking or favorite-ing – this is where the students mark for later use web sites, resources and files. Students can then organize 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 favorites, 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 the student is 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 word or term.
Before a student can complete many of these activities, learning to type is a must. In learning to type, my students integrate many of these verbs, but it could be better. Adding our typing success to a classroom blog would add additional activities that will help my students achieve classroom, technological, and most importantly, high-stake testing success.	Typing, mastering, advancing