Digital Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy and Revised Taxonomy vs. Digital Bloom’s Taxonomy
Similarities	Differences
-Key terms remain the same from Revised Bloom’s to Digital Bloom’s -Both focus on the spectrum of thinking skills -LOTS- lower order thinking skills           -HOTS- higher order thinking skills -It’s not about the tools needed to learn, more about using the tools -Learning is a process -Neither tell us what to teach, rather they tell us how to teach in order to foster higher order thinking skills	-Verbs are significantly different -Old and Revised Bloom’s stay in the cognitive domain, Digital Bloom’s includes methods -Digital moves towards higher order thinking skills more -Old Bloom’s used Nouns -Revised Bloom’s used Verbs -Digital Bloom’s uses more and newer Verbs -Digital has an emphasis on Collaboration

In my language arts class every year I read aloud The BFG by Roald Dahl. My students and I have a lot of discussions about the characters and their development throughout the story. I teach one particular lesson where we create character maps for several different characters. Every student gets to choose what character to cover. The map includes a paragraph about what we know about the character. The students select several quotes from the book said by their character. They also get to draw a picture of the character. We also write a paragraph about the characters relationships to the other characters.

Skills of character analysis are necessary for my students to posses. However, my current tactic for getting there does not implement any higher order thinking skills. At the most I was asking students to remember and understand. So I decided a more hands on approach to this lesson was necessary. I also thought that a larger more comprehensive project would be greatly beneficial to my students.

This project I plant to call The Sophie Diaries. I will put my students into mixed ability groups so they can collaborate on this project. This will be an ongoing project throughout the whole read aloud and incorporate many reading strategies and higher level thinking skills.   Each group will create a video blog, or vlog, on schooltube.com. The group will work together to analyses the characters and summarize what is going on in the story each chapter. Then, students will assume the role of different characters we come across in the story. For example, one student might act as Sophie in a video vlog. It is as though Sophie was keeping a video diary throughout her whole journey. She records herself speaking, summarizing what is going on in her life at the time, talking about how she is feeling, what she thinks is going to happen next, and her relationship with other characters. Sophie will have vlog entries as well as the BFG, the Fleshlumpeater, and the Queen.            In creating these videos, students not only have to have sympathy, and be aware of how characters are feeling. They also have to have empathy and feel what the characters are feeling.  They will form a much more authentic and complete idea of each character. We can later re-watch these video diary entries to see the entire progression of the story.

In doing this project, students will be using many more of Bloom’s higher order thinking skills. They will also be incorporating Digital Bloom’s taxonomy by vlogging, filming, commenting, collaborating, playing, and editing. They need to use iPads to record the videos and iMac desktop computers to edit the footage together. I will also be showing students how to upload these videos onto the schooltube website themselves. Then students will have to go online and watch the other groups’ videos and comment on them in a positive and constructive way.

By planning with Bloom’s in mind, I have taken a relatively easy and boring lesson and turned it into a truly meaningful project that requires the students to use their higher order thinking skills and they will get much more out of it.