Week 4: We got the HOTS for Bloom

  This week's reading focused on Benjamin Bloom and his research. To be completely transparent, when I first saw this Wikispace page, Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, I was overwhelmed with information on all the pages. However, the further I dug into the resources, the more intrigued I was, and the simpler it was. While there are many forms of Bloom's Taxonomy, it is simply that no matter what the learner wants to learn, they must initiate their learning from the lowest point and work up. HOTS is an acronym for Higher Order Thinking Skills, this broken down by the remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and then creating.  In order to due all of these things you need to accomplish each one in order. In order to accomplish evaluating, you need to first be able to understand, apply, and analyze your area of learning.  Each step is broken down, in reference to digital learning, applying can be broken down to key verbs such as implementing, carrying out using, showing, exhibiting, or executing. While real life example of accomplishing applying, in reference to digital, is running, loading, hacking, sharing, or editing digital media. Another useful feature of this article is that it gives great examples on how to achieve these steps. For understanding, students or teachers can use a number of tools to show understanding or gain it. Venn Diagrams, minds maps, and graphical organizers can help student take information from a study, or article and organize it to gain understanding of topics, and themes.

Another thing I found interesting was the link,  Bloom’s Taxonomy, 3 Billion photos on Flickr in just  November of 2008. Also 17.2 million hours of streaming by international users in May 2008, was a statistic that stood out to me. The Jump from 38% to 71% of teens that listen to music on their phone, I am sure this figure is closer to 100% in 2018. To me this shows how important it is to stay relevant technologically. The fact that Halo can make 270 million dollars in one week is mind blowing! I believe they included this into the reference because the statistics show how in our field. Our world is always changing, to stay on top of these changes we should be sure to use Bloom’s Taxonomy and apply it to the new technology that can be applied in the classroom.

With all this new knowledge, the challenge is how do I take this, and apply it to my future classroom. My big take-a-ways from Bloom’s taxonomy is building my lessons around the same concepts. When talking about a new lesson or introducing a new subject, I should make sure to break it down into these steps. Students can be introduced to cells first so they remember what cell are when we are starting a new lesson on cell structure. Once they remember it, then we can introduce cell structure and understand what makes a cell stand on its own. And so on and so on, having the students build on the steps they already have built on and accomplished. My second take-a-way is that I will challenge myself to stay current with technology, as teachers we have a lot on our plates. It is easy to make excuses to not take the time to do these same steps when it comes to technology that can enhance our classroom and our students learning. Overcoming this challenge will hopefully make me the teacher I dream to be.