Bloom´s Taxonomy

Most educators are familiar with bloom´s taxonomy a model that classifies different levels of
human cognition and thinking learning and understanding as a teacher you´ve likely used this
taxonomy to guide the development of curriculum assessments and Instructional strategies but how
is this model affected in an age of digital technology and how might it influence your Instructional
design.
Blooms taxonnomy was in the 1950s by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and his
colleagues the three lower levels knowledge comprehension and application are more basic levels
of cognition also called lower order thinking skills this would include concrete thinking
memorization and understanding the three upper levels analysis synthesis and evaluation referred to
as higher-order thinking skills include abstract critical metacognitive and creative thinking some
have likened the model to Changes to the Taxonomy a mountain or a stairway where teachers set
learning objectives and design learning experiences to guide students to higher levels of thinking
the taxonomy has become an important model for structuring students learning processes in the
1990s Bloom's taxonomy was updated by a group led by David Kraft wall one of the original
authors and Lauren Anderson a former student of blooms to make the model relevant to 21st
century learning one of their main changes was updating the nouns associated with each level -
action-oriented verbs this differentiation positions thinking as an action based process rather than
one of passive acquisition for example knowledge was replaced with remember analysis was
changed to analyze and so on they also reordered the last two steps evaluation which was previously
at the top was moved down and creating formally synthesis was moved to the top with this framing
educators have several different verbs questions and instructional strategies associated with each
How Technology Affects it in recent years there have been many iterations and metaphors for
Bloom's taxonomy including an orange where the six levels are distributed more equally moving
cogs representing an inter working system in which creation is dependent upon all of the other
aspects for a flipped pyramid illustrating an emphasis on higher-order thinking skills but in thinking
about how technology affects this model consider it as blooms digital taxonomy this updated
versión aims to expand upon the skills associated with each level as technology becomes a more
ingrained and essential part of learning for instance some propose that new action verbs can be
applied within each level let's take a look at creating in which learners are designing inventing or
constructing a piece of work that shows what they know one could add new digital verbs to creating
like blog remix or program these verbs refer to possible learning activities that incorporate digital
technologies in which students are creating adding digital verbs to the taxonomy also promotes 21st
century skills like communication collaboration creativity and critical thinking others have taken the
six levels of the taxonomy and align them with technology tools that help foster each level for
example as a teacher you can think about how to integrate apps and websites that help students
remember content like flashcards or drill and practice tolos there are tools that help students analyze
and make sense of content like reading charts graphs or mind maps or you can think about what
tools support student creation like producing podcasting blogging coding editing and with these
examples the focus should not necessarily be on the tools themselves but on how the tools can be
vehicles in transforming student thinking at different levels so as you Reeve technology into your
teaching ask yourself how can the tools you use support different cognitive levels which tools help
you address lower order thinking skills and which can help challenge students higher-order thinking
skills and siddur how blooms digital taxonomy can help you identify ways to design technology
rich learning experiences for your students you