Lisa Harris Marketing

Thanks to the global reach of the Internet, the other day I stumbled upon this little gem courtesy of Andrew Churches of Auckland, New Zealand.

Benjamin Bloom was an educational psychologist working at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. His original taxonomy was designed to help educators to understand and structure the learning process, based on progressing students along a continuum starting from “Lower Order Thinking Skills” and moving towards “Higher Order Thinking Skills”. The underlying principle is that the higher order skills are dependent upon prior acquisition of lower order skills, which means (for example) that we cannot apply knowledge until we have understood it. The terminology used in Bloom’s Taxonomy has been revised over the years, and now looks like this:

Remembering – Understanding – Applying – Analysing – Evaluating – Creating

Bloom’s Taxonomy accounts for many of the traditional educational practices, behaviours and actions but it does not account for the new learning activities that are associated with Web 2.0 technologies. Andrew has very usefully mapped these to Bloom’s categories, which I have summarised as follows:

Andrew notes that “Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy isn’t about the tools or technologies rather it is about using these to facilitate learning”. Obviously certain activities will cross these boundaries – blogging, for example, is an activity which can be carried out at many different levels, and over time today’s popular tools will evolve and change. But this is a very welcome framework for educators to re-think how they deliver and assess their courses. You can read the full story and access a range of supporting resources on Andrew’s wiki