The Beginning of Mobile Learning Communities

What does a classroom look like when every kid has a technology device in their hand?  What can be done in that class?  How do we manage a class such as this?  Is it effective?  Does pedagogy change?  Is a tablet or a laptop more effective?  All of these questions and more is what we hope to discover in our 1:1 laptop/tablet pilot!

This is an exciting time in education because we are moving away from the traditional classroom of teachers and students to a community of learners.  With this paradigm shift comes many shifts in education.  The teacher is now a facilitator and a learner.  The students learn from each other and also facilitate their own learning.  Pedagogy shifts from recalling and remembering facts to evaluating, analyzing and applying content to their own lives.  Students and facilitators are no longer confined to the 4 walls.   Their community now includes 7 continents and a few planets.

Feel free to join us in our adventure of creating this environment for our students.  Join us as we climb to the higher elevations of Bloom's. Join us as our students soar to limits unknown.  We look forward to sharing our ah has and uh ohs.  We also would love for you to join our community and sharing tips or best practices you have experienced in your classroom.  I am so excited to learn this year with our community of learners.  You can follow the community's blog at www.wscommunityoflearners.blogspot.com

Create!!!!!

I am a big fan of encouraging students to create to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. Creating is a High Order Thinking Skill in Bloom's Taxonomy.

Here are some resources I have pulled together on Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and ideas for how it is being used in various places. :

I love the stuff Kelly Tenkely writes and creates for her blog (iLearnTechnology.com). She is a huge fan of Bloom's. Kelly is so helpful and willing to share. She lives in Colorado and is opening her own school this year. We have gotten to be friends through twitter and blogs. Here are some of her resources:
Bloomin’ Peacock *this is one of my favorites
Bloomin’ Pinwheel
Umbloomra
Bloomin’ Tree

Bloom’s Taxonomy Live Binder

Here are some other resources I found that may inspire other ideas:

Bloom's Revised Planning Framework
Exploring Batteries using Bloom's Revised

Fractions with Bloom's Revised
Making Movement with Bloom's Revised
Bloom's web 2.0 wiki

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Wiki

As I searched through my blog to see what I have written about concerning Bloom's Taxonomy, I found it has been a popular topic for me too!

Bloomin' Resources (even when it is cold)
Technology is Bloomin'! (great storybird creation included here)
Blooming Orange
Blooming Butterfly

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/41598237@N00/3352954780/

Blooming Resources (even when it is cold)

Having discovered Kelly Tenkely's blog iLearnTechnology was like finding a gold-filled treasure chest. Getting to know Kelly through her blog and on twitter (@ktenkely) has been even better. Steven Anderson and I both attended a webinar she did last week about thinking and teaching creatively at the Knowledge Learning Place. Resources and sites she shared were posted to a LiveBinder called Thinking Creatively with Kelly Tenkely. The recording of that session will also be added to that LiveBinder when it is ready.

One thing that really stood out to me from that webinar was Kelly's Digital Bloom's Taxonomy LiveBinder. I am a big fan of Kelly's creations that go along with Bloom's Taxonomy (peacock, umbrella, tree ...). In the webinar, she said that she created one and then students suggested the ideas for the other Bloom's images. I think the one that I like the most right now is the Bloomin' Digital Peacock!

Digital Bloom's Taxonomy

In Kelly's Digital Bloom's Taxonomy LiveBinder, she shares digital tools that can be used with students to help them Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. Both that LiveBinder and her Blog provide lots of great resources for you to check out!

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/53611153@N00/3423709188/

Bloomin' Creations ...

Recently I have been quite impressed with the various representations I have found online of Blooms Taxonomy.
Kelly Tenkely's blog ilearntechnology.com has several (including some digital resources):

• Bloomin' Tree
• Bloomin' Pinwheel
• Um-bloom-ra
• Bloomin' Peacock

Just today I came across another great resource related to Bloom's Taxonomy. I was very fortunate to find a Storybird creation that uses questions to help introduce the idea of Blooms Taxonomy to children. Storybird makes it possible to do so many things with collaborative storytelling and writing. This Blooming Questions Storybird was created by Jane Hewitt who also has a great blog (but that is for another post). I saw her name on the Storybird, so I went to twitter and searched for her. Once I found her on twitter, I found a link to her blog that contains all kinds of neat projects she has done with students.

Go to this link to read/play the story below: http://storybird.com/books/blooming-questions/

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

Most educators have heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy and how he proposed that learning fit into one of three psychological domains – cognitive, affective and psychomotor moving from lower order thinking skills to high order thinking skills. The original taxonomy categories are:

• Knowledge


• Comprehension


• Application


• Analysis


• Synthesis


• Evaluation

Then in 2001 a revised taxonomy was developed by Lorin Anderson and D Krathwohl which listed the categories as:

• Remembering


• Understanding


• Applying


• Analyzing


• Evaluating


• Creating

Recently I read an article about Bloom’s Taxonomy in the digital world from an educator named Andrew Churches. Briefly outlined, this is how Andrew sees teachers using technology with the revised taxonomy in the digital world.

• Remembering – retrieval of information
  Digital World – bulleting to mark key words, bookmark websites, social bookmarking or Googling
  


• Understanding – interpreting, summarizing, paraphrasing, comparing
  Digital World – refining basic searches, Blog journaling, Twittering, categorizing, commenting / annotating files



• Applying – implementing using information and executing tasks
  Digital World – initiating a program, operating / manipulating hardware and applications, gaming technology, uploading and sharing of materials on sites such as Flickr, editing Twitters or blog journals



• Analyzing – comparing, organizing, structuring and integrating
  Digital World – mash ups (several data sources melded into single usable information), links within documents and webpages, validating information found on the web, making judgments about found information, tagging, meta-tagging



• Evaluating – hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing and monitoring
  Digital World – blog commenting and reflecting, posting threaded discussions, moderating blogs, effective collaboration that involves evaluating the strengths and abilities of participants, evaluating the contributions of others, testing: analyzing the purpose of a tool or process, analyzing and evaluating data sources and making judgments



• Creating – designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising and making
  Digital World – Programming, filming, animating, videocasting, podcasting, mixing and remixing to create unique products, directing and producing, publishing, video blogging, building / compiling mash ups and at the highest level creating a program application or developing a game

This is an excellent article to assist teachers as they implement digital tools into the curriculum. Included in Andrew Churches’ article are more detailed examples for each category and scoring rubrics.

Listed are several links to learn more about the revised Bloom's Taxonomy and Bloom's Digital Taxonomy by Andrew Churches:

• Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy


• Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Digital World


• Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (PDF)

Google image:
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&ndsp=20&hl=en&q=+site:blogger.com+bloom%27s+taxonomy