Bloom’s Taxonomy, developed in the 1950’s, expresses thinking and learning through a set of concepts that begin with lower order thinking skills (LOTS) and build to higher order thinking skills (HOTS). The initial phraseology of Bloom’s Taxonomy had six levels, beginning with knowledge at the lowest, then progressing through comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

The basis for the theory is rather straightforward, a person cannot understand something that he does not remember (know) nor can he/she analyse or apply that knowledge if the person does not understand the material. Though an ability to analyse and apply certainly supersedes the basic knowledge category, to synthesise entails divergently applying knowledge and/or skills to produce something new. Lastly, evaluating or judging the value of material is necessary to produce a worthy final end product.

Content

Revised Taxonomy

In the 1990's, a former student of Bloom, Lorin Anderson with David Krathwohl, revised Bloom's Taxonomy and published Bloom's Revised Taxonomy in 2001.

Key to this was 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 to higher order:

Remembering
Understanding
Applying
Analysing
Evaluating
Creating (Revised position) (Anderson and Krathwohl considered creativity to be higher within the cognitive domain than evaluation).

The current educational landscape is vastly different from that of either the 1950s or even that of 2001, rendering a lack of clarity as to where the levels of the taxonomy fit. As education heads into the digital world, many of us struggle with where to place new technology tasks within this long-standing hierarchal guide to teaching and learning.

The Digital Taxonomy

Andrew Churches has become well known for his work in mapping Bloom's Taxonomy to digital tools, so that educators can get some ideas about how to use digital tools for learning and teaching:

Bloom's_Digital_Taxonomy.jpg

Some of the tools he uses as examples in his 2009 publication have become obsolete or have been superseded. Nonetheless, the underlying principles still stand. In our discussions this week we will look at how we can introduce tools into the currricula that both give students digital skills, as well as help their cognitive development. One of the factors we have to take into account is that many of us are constrained by firewalls and ICT policies which prevent us from deploying some of the technologies we might wish to. There are new additions to VLEs arriving like the IBM social collaboration suite (Sametime, Connections and Meetings) which allow us access to some of the technology from within firewalls. However, it is not clear if students will be willing to leave the digital spaces they know and love in order to use these tools.

I did come across this downloadable diagram from Fructus Learning. It may be worth downloading and using if you are trying to influence those around you to move towards a more digital way of thinking about learning and teaching:

Digital Tools

Bloom's Taxonomy Tools is a Google document created by New Jersey superintendent Scott Rocco (@ScottRRocco), and it features a list of 89 web tools and mobile apps that correspond with every thinking level of Bloom's taxonomy. This work is a collective effort from different teachers and educators who have come together and crowdsourced ideas and tools to help teachers make the best of Bloom's digital taxonomy in their instruction. As you will see the document features five columns: one for the name of the app, the other specifies the level of Bloom's taxonomy the app addresses, the third column is for links of the apps, the fourth is on what the app does and the last one captures some ideas on how the app can be used. Have a look and if you can, contribute with an app or tool to the list. Click here to access Bloom's Taxonomy Tools Google doc.

References and Reading

Anderson, L.W., and D. Krathwohl (Eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: a Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Longman, New York.

Churches, A. (2009) Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. [WWW] http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/bloom%27s+Digital+taxonomy+v3.01.pdf