Evaluating Lesson Plans: Digital Bloom's

Video Transcription

Hello, and thank you for joining me to discuss evaluating lesson plans-- digital Bloom's. Today, we're going to answer what criteria should I use for evaluating lesson plans using digital Bloom's levels.

Let's do a quick digital Bloom's recap. As you can see, Bloom's original thinking skills are on the left-hand side. And then the technology, digital Bloom's update using the Web 2.0 tools, are on the right-hand side.

So where we have the lowest level of identify for original Bloom's, that would be, remember, for technology, it's bookmark. And it moves up from there.

So at the lowest level, we have the lower-order thinking skills, basically recall. And at the higher level, we have the higher-order thinking skills. And this is where students are creating and making assessments about their learning and evaluations and synthesizing.

So remember that lessons that incorporate digital Bloom's, we'll do the same thing that a lesson that incorporates original Bloom's do where they move from the very bottom lower-order thinking skills to the higher-order thinking skills.

So for a lesson that incorporates digital Bloom's, they're going to go from bookmarking. They're going to move their way up to eventually editing, and then maybe creating. And in this case, a creation example would be a blog.

And another important thing to remember is that lessons that include digital Bloom's will actually require students to perform at maybe one level. Maybe they're just editing maybe some levels, a combination of one to two or three extra levels-- or all levels. So keep that in mind as we evaluate our lesson plan based on digital Bloom's.

The process for evaluating lesson plans using digital Bloom's is that you really want to ask yourself these two guiding questions. One is, did the teacher use digital Bloom's verbs to create objectives and learning activities. And the second is, did the teacher incorporate technology skills from a variety of levels of Bloom's as appropriate.

So let's look at this process for evaluation a little more in depth. What if we had inadequate answers to these Questions So again, the first one is, did the teacher use digital Bloom's verbs to create objectives in learning activities.

What if the teacher did not? What might some problems be if you are trying to plan a lesson using digital Bloom's and you're not using the digital Bloom's verbs? The digital Bloom's verbs just really help us be intentional about what we're doing.

So if you say that a student is creating, but in reality what they're doing is moderating a website, then you're not actually using the correct digital Bloom's verbs when you're creating your lesson plans. And so we would need to improve on that.

And we'd really have to look at the lesson plan and evaluate what are the goals of the lessons, what are the objectives, and then match that up with the different digital Bloom's.

Or you could also do it the other way around, like what level of digital Bloom's do you want your students to be at. And how can we form the objectives around that? And that relates to lesson planning with SAMR where, if you're trying to plan a lesson based on a certain technology level, like creating-- so you're going to have your students create a blog-- then you're redefining your lesson.

The other one is, did the teacher incorporate technology skills from a variety of levels of digital Bloom's as appropriate. So if the answer to this is no, we have a big problem. Because we don't want to be using technology for technology's sake. And you also don't want to be forcing students who maybe aren't familiar with technology and don't have that skill set to use stuff that they don't know how to use. Otherwise, the lesson just loses its meaningfulness.

So you want to make sure that you're using a variety of technology from digital Bloom's. This just goes back to differentiation.

Let's take a look at the Goldilocks principle. And the Goldilocks principle just says, are you using too much technology. Are using too little technology? Or is the amount of technology you're using just right? And you want to shoot for using the just right amount of technology.

So then how do we know if it's too much technology or just tech for tech's sake? You just have to ask yourself, is the technology I'm using actually enhancing my student learning. And is it helping me meet the objectives in my classroom? And if not, then get rid of it, because it's maybe not necessary.

Let's look at an example of where we're evaluating a digital Bloom's lesson. So the lesson plan overview is that students will research a 20th century American history event. So again, we are going to look at our guiding questions.

The first one is, are students using the right digital tools. In this lesson application, they are because I want them to create. That's the level of Bloom's that we're at.

And so to create, my students are using Dreamweaver. They're also learning how to write code. So they're doing things like Kodable.

And we're actually using really all levels of Bloom's taxonomy because they're going to start out just searching for this 20th century American history event that they want to write about or create a website about. And then they're moving up that pyramid from those lower-order thinking skills. Once they find resources that are good, they're going to start editing maybe some message boards. They're going to maybe mash together resources to eventually this create or design level of Bloom's taxonomy.

The other guiding question is, are the digital elements the teacher is using helping the students reach the Bloom's levels. And I said yes, because the digital elements we're using are personal computers that the students are able to research with. They're also using databases. They're also using Dreamweaver and code to help them.

So they are using a variety of digital resources. And none of them really deter or distract the students from the goal of the lesson. Therefore, they are helping the students with the goal of the lesson.

Let's take a minute to reflect. So the first thing I want you to reflect on is, how can you figure out the appropriate technology for a given task. And what deems it appropriate? The second question I want you to reflect on is, what is one guiding question you would propose to evaluate a current lesson plan.

To review-- today, we answered what criteria we should use for evaluating lesson plans using digital Bloom's. To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the Additional Resources section associated with this video. This is where you'll find links targeted toward helping you discover more ways to apply this course material.

Thank you for joining me, and happy teaching.