Learning encompasses a series of specific tasks, sometimes in order but most often not. The elements of authentic learning are in Bloom's Taxonomy and online tech tools can help today’s digital students to navigate through its elements collaboratively.
Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy outlines critical thinking skills through the lens of Digital Natives. The levels of this taxonomy are:
With so many different project ideas out there as well as apps that foster critical thinking skills, it’s easy to get caught up in taking too much time to find the right tool. The challenge is to go from traditional uses of the taxonomy to best digital practices—that is, as a Global Digital Learner.
We’ll list the components of digital taxonomy and then look at critical thinking tools for students of the digital age to develop their skills with. If you are a teacher who is working with students remotely, these suggestions will suit your needs perfectly.
Remembering is: Recognizing, Listing, Describing, Identifying, Retrieving, Naming, Locating/Finding, Bullet-Pointing, Highlighting, Bookmarking, Social Networking, Social Bookmarking, Favouriting/Local Bookmarking, Searching, Googling
Tools to Try: YouTube and other flipped learning sites that allow teachers to create and post their lectures online are great ways to reach learners when they’re most comfortable, and when they have time. With Remembering skills being practised before class, your meeting time with students is reserved for higher-order thinking skills.
Any tool that can help you create great flipped lectures belongs in this list. There’s PowToon, EdTED, and Clarisketch as other great examples. Here’s even more on flipped learning from Jon Bergmann.
Social bookmarking can be made simple using tools like Cling, Pinterest, or Reddit. Other popular tools that fall into this category are Evernote Web Clipper, Trello, and Stache. These are Web tools that have the advantage of going beyond bookmarking features, and into the realms of searching, networking, and retrieving, among others.
Understanding is: Interpreting, Exemplifying, Summarizing, Inferring, Paraphrasing, Classifying, Comparing, Explaining, Advanced Searches, Boolean Searches, Blog Journalling, Tweeting, Categorizing And Tagging, Commenting, Annotating, Subscribing
Tools to Try: Mind mapping is one of the best activities for understanding, especially collaboratively among learners. Tools like Mindmaple and MindNode stand out among some of the best mind mapping tools available on the Web. If you want to explore more, check out this article on Lifehacker for their take on the best 5 tools for creating mind maps.
Students can also get answers to their questions by making use of simple tools like forums, or by conducting interviews using video tools like Skype, Zoom, or FreeConference. They can utilise these interfaces to chat with peers, do collaborative research, and connect with community professionals who can respond to their queries and provide them with insights.
Applying is: Implementing, Carrying Out, Using, Executing, Running, Loading, Playing, Operating, Hacking, Uploading, Sharing, Editing, Wiki Editing
Tools to Try: Website/blogging tools like Weebly and Edublogs are the resources you need to do this. Others are ones that help you plan a course of action for application. Gantt charts can give you an idea of a timeline for progression and completion.
If learners have never built one before, this article on Smartsheet has got them covered with a full breakdown. You may also want to dabble in organized task management applications. For this kind of process, great tools like Basecamp and Asana can help you get the job done.
Analysing is: Comparing, Organising, Deconstructing, Attributing, Outlining, Structuring, Integrating, Linking, Reverse-Engineering, Cracking, Mind-Mapping, Validating, Calculating
Tools to Try: Many of the tools for Apply are the same kinds of applications that work well for this stage of the Taxonomy. However, there are others worth looking at intended for the taxonomic skills of Analysing.
Students can try out tools like Lucidchart and Creately for free for data visualization and graph making. For tasks that involve structuring and outlining, you can't go wrong with OneNote, Toodledo, or Google Docs. There's even one called Little Outliner integrated with Twitter.
Notetaking resources such as these are excellent avenues for:
Evaluating is: Checking, Hypothesizing Critiquing, Experimenting, Judging, Testing, Detecting, Monitoring, Blog/Vlog Commenting, Reviewing, Posting, Moderating, Collaborating, Networking, Reflecting, Alpha/Beta Testing
Tools to Try: The key difference between Analyzing and Evaluating is collaboration. What’s useful is putting your product out there for critique and beta testing. For evaluating information, tools like Snopes and FactCheck.org are worth looking at. As you use these tools, remember to to "balance check" various news sources and information resources for patterns and connected ideas.
In any arena of Globa Digital Citizenship, good commenting practices are key. There's plenty of vitriol on the anonymous Web. With this in mind, encourage students to practice positive commenting and constructive feedback on social media posts, video feeds, and generally an online interaction.
Creating is: Designing, Constructing, Planning, Producing, Inventing, Devising, Making, Building, Programming, Filming, Animating, Blogging, Video Blogging, Mixing, Remixing, Wiki-ing, Publishing, Videocasting, Podcasting, Directing/Producing
Tools to Try: Creating is the pinnacle of Boom's Taxonomy, the peak of the learning mountain, and the flagship skill of the HOTS (higher-order thinking skills). When it comes to being creative, there's absolutely no limit to what earners can engineer to solve problems that matter.
Students can build digital portfolios using Google Sites, Evernote, and VoiceThread. If they're into podcasting, get them on Audacity or Podbean. They can produce visual stories using Shorthand, Storybird, or Chatterpix. For a real challenge, they can even create animations using Adobe Spark, Xtranormal, or Vyond.
And what about brand building? Blogging and website creation tools include the ones mentioned in Apply, along with Wix, WordPress, and Ghost. Video tools to look at are ones such as Jahshaka, WeVideo, or Magisto.
We've got great critical thinking tools of our own that are also aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy. Aside from our poster of Bloom's Taxonomy Verbs, your absolute best bet for tools you can use right now is the Critical Thinking Companion which includes great activities and rubrics. It's a teacher's dream for teaching critical thinking through the lens of Bloom's Taxonomy.
And we haven't forgotten the younger learners, either. They'll have a blast with our popular resource Bloom's Zoonomy. Access all these resources for free when you join Wabisabi Learning Community, the premier Professional Learning Community for educators and leaders.
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