Understanding this was a bit like herding cats. Here are my two new girls (Daisy (Buchanan and Dorthy (Dottie) Parker) as of 12/31/09. Both sitting inside trying to catch birds that were flying outside...'nough said.
I appreciate what Andrew Churches is trying to do with Bloom’s taxonomy: that megalith of educational thought and pedagogy. But I find the organization and execution of his ”new” digital taxonomy a not as straightforward as it could be.
I do appreciate the refresher. I often think that my lesson plans deal with Higher Order Thinking Skills (God, I hate it, but, HOTS), but after reading Churches’ summary of Anderson and Krathwohl’s revised taxonomy, I appreciated thinking about the verbs. I also appreciate his (common sense) domain for communication skills. I realize that many of my lessons’ goals and objectives often have to do with understanding, applying, and analyzing. I’m not sure how often I think about this, so this alone was worth reading and reviewing.
I will continue with 2 positive comments and then a critique.
I appreciate Churches’ reviews of several tech2.0 resources. Many I had heard of before—delicious.com, buzzword, wikispaces, et cetera. I like how he suggests how these resources might be useful in particular classrooms. I also like how he suggests rubrics that measure students’ reaching aspects of his new digital taxonomy.
As much as I appreciate (count how many times I've used that word!) what Churches is trying to do, I think he might be trying to do too much. While reading the article I felt like there were too many verbs and the organization of the digital taxonomy is a bit slack. I would have appreciated a tighter connection between Bloom’s original taxonomy and the digital taxonomy Churches is suggesting.
Overall, an interesting article. I’m not sure exactly how I will use these resources, but it is something I will consider when I think about and plan for the education of my 21st century students.
Love the cats. Glad they're yours (not mine).
ReplyDeleteI felt similarly to you in the reading of this. I think that all of the focus on how to implement the taxonomy into our culture was somewhate helpful, I agree that he was trying too hard to reinvent the wheel. More practical and easier to understand application of the tools would have been better.
No doubt you were as upset as I about the misuse of "there" for "their" and the Aussie slang of "speaking marks" (at least five minutes before I realized, by looking at the Boolean diagram that "quotation marks" are a synonym...also, I was troubled by the fact that the rubrics were all about the technology (despite references to grammar), not the content...but OTHERWISE, I was delighted with the straightforward definitions of terms (so that's what Voicethread is!) I also love your cats...meow...
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