Hot Apps 4 HOTS (link opens to iTunes) is a free ebook about iOS apps that can be used to help students practice and develop higher order thinking skills. The book takes readers through a series of apps that are aligned to the various parts of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. Examples and suggestions for app use are included in the book. As Hot Apps 4 HOTS is an ibook, it can only be viewed on an iOS device.
Applications for Education
If your school is one that is rolling-out iPads for student use, check out Hot Apps 4 HOTS to find some good apps and ideas that you can bring into your classroom.
Bloomin' Android links to free apps for each level and task type of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. To navigate the display just click on a level and task type to find a free app that students can use to accomplish a task.
Applications for Education
If your school is using Android tablets, Bloomin' Android could be a great resource to share with your colleagues. Even if your school doesn't have a formal Anroid-based program, Bloomin' Android could be useful for finding apps to recommend to students to use on their own.
We all probably remember studying Bloom’s Taxonomy in college and how it can be incorporated into our lesson plans. Benjamin Bloom created his taxonomy in the 1950s and we have been using his structure ever since to understand the learning process. In 2001, Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl revised the taxonomy and published Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.
Andrew Churches, an educator in New Zealand, has done a great deal of writing about incorporating technology into Bloom's Revised Technology. The blog Open Education explains, “Thanks to some great work by Andrew Churches, educators have a basis by which to compare digital techniques to the more traditional standard that Bloom created.”
For a much more in depth look at integrating technology into Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy, visit Churches’ wiki Educational Origami. It is filled with resources for educators interested in Bloom’s Reivsed Taxonomy and 21st Century Learning.
I think if we understand Churches’ update on Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy and how technology can be used to bring students to higher order thinking skills then we can provide many of our teachers with effective ways to incorporate technology into their instruction. Here are some of the ways we have been using free technology in our school to help students reach each level of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.
REMEMBERING: Recalling information or knowledge. & UNDERSTANDING: Constructing Meaning
One of the best tools we have put in our students’ hands to help them reach the remembering and understanding level is Diigo. With the Diigo educator account you can create student accounts for you entire class, without the need for email addresses for the registration. Social bookmarking is a valuable tool to help students in recalling the vast amounts of information that is available to them. Bookmarking websites and resources to Diigo will allow students to retrieve information both quickly and effectively.
Social bookmarking tools such as Diigo can fall under the remembering level and the understanding level. Teaching students to comment and tag their resources helps them to construct meaning of the resource and will bring them to an understanding level. They are no longer just saving a website, but they are summarizing and classifying the resource for later use. It is important for our students to be able to understand, summarize, and classify the massive amounts of information they have access to.
APPLYING: Carrying out, running, or executing procedures.
The third step in the taxonomy is Applying which Andrew Churches would say is the level where students implement, use information, and execute tasks. A big aspect of this would be “Doing.” The great thing about the applying taxonomy level is the amount of options that we have available for our students. All six taxonomy levels have been significantly affected by Web 2.0 applications, but it is in this level that they really start to investigate how each tool can be used.
Examples of tools that students can use include Prezi, Glogster, Powerpoint, Skype, Google Apps, iPhoto, iMovie, Flickr, etc. There are a numerous amount of applications available to us, too numerous to list here. (Just browse through Richard’s blog, freetech4teachers.com, and you will find more tools than you could ever use in your classroom).
ANALYSING – Make connections, compare, organize, and present information that is collected.
Online applications such as Google Forms and Wordle provide our students with opportunities to analyze information instantly and in a uniquely visual way. Our 8th grade algebra class has used Google Forms to collect data related to homework performance and group project performances. Using the “Show summary of responses” feature provides an instant visual of the information that has been collected. In January, our junior high social studies compared President Obama’s State of the Union address to past presidents’ addresses by using Wordles of each president’s speech.
The final two steps of Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy are very important because they give students an audience. It is an important part of developing the higher order thinking skills and providing the students with a more authentic learning experience.
EVALUATION - Making judgments, validate, reflect & CREATING - The student, remembers, understands & applies knowledge, analysis and evaluates outcomes, results, successes and failures as well as processes to produce a final product
The most common way that I see our teachers reaching the evaluating level with our students is through blogging and Voicethread. Our teachers use Edublogs with their classes and each student has their own blog. They have the ability to publish posts as well as receive feedback on their writing in the form of comments. Publishing their writing to their student blog provides an authentic audience for the students. Blog commenting allows other students from around the world to make judgments, validate, and reflect on other students' writing.
Voicethread has also been used for students to evaluate, all the way from @alhelmy'spreschool students up to our junior high students in @gilmorekendra's music class. The examples are below from the preschool and junior high classes.
Finally, one of the best examples of the creating level that I have seen is students producing videos. Here is a video from @rlimback's full-day Kindergarten class using a flip camera, iMovie, and uploaded to youtube:
Examining the verbs and activities in Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy can help our classrooms become student-centered, 21st century learning environments. My encouragement is to not look at which level will be most effective for students, but to look at the entire taxonomy and decide how this will be beneficial to you as the teacher. How can this taxonomy assist you with your instruction?
Over the years I've written about many different ways that Google tools can be used in the classroom. In fact, there are so many Google tools that can be used in the classroom that it can be hard to keep track of them all. Fortunately for all of us Kathy Schrock has created an excellent resource to address that problem. Google Tools to Support Bloom's Revised Taxonomy is an interactive graphic that lists and links to Google tools that can be used to accomplish the tasks associated with each level of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.
Read Kathy Schrock's blog post in which she explains why she created this helpful interactive graphic.
Applications for Education
The next you're designing a lesson and you're wondering if Google has a resource to help you accomplish your lesson goals, check out Google Tools to Support Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.
The Community College System of Colorado has a faculty wiki on which there is a page about Bloom's Taxonomy. The Bloom's Taxonomy page contains two flash tutorials designed to help teachers to plan lessons and create assignments using Bloom's Taxonomy. The first tutorial is a general overview of Bloom's Taxonomy. The second tutorial applies the concepts of Bloom's Taxonomy to current Internet resources like blogs, wikis, and multimedia mash-up tools.
Applications for Education The Bloom's Taxonomy tutorials on the CCCS faculty wiki could be helpful for teachers and student teachers trying to apply the concepts of Bloom's Taxonomy to the use of current web tools.
Mike Fisher, an instructional coach and education consultant, has created an interesting wiki called Visual Blooms. Visual Blooms inserts web resources into the hierarchical categories of Bloom's Taxonomy. Web resources are placed into the categories of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. For example, Delicious is placed in the remembering category while VoiceThread is placed in the creating category.
Applications for Education Visual Blooms could be an excellent resource for teachers who are looking for web resources that can be used to address the needs of Bloom's Taxonomy.
The Community College System of Colorado has a faculty wiki on which there is a page about Bloom's Taxonomy. The Bloom's Taxonomy page contains two flash tutorials designed to help teachers to plan lessons and create assignments using Bloom's Taxonomy. The first tutorial is a general overview of Bloom's Taxonomy. The second tutorial applies the concepts of Bloom's Taxonomy to current Internet resources like blogs, wikis, and multimedia mash-up tools.
Mike Fisher, an instructional coach and education consultant, has created an interesting wiki called Visual Blooms. Visual Blooms inserts web resources into the hierarchical categories of Bloom's Taxonomy. Web resources are placed into the categories of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. For example, Delicious is placed in the remembering category while VoiceThread is placed in the creating category.
