Lesson Planning Using Digital Bloom's

Video Transcription

Welcome to a tutorial on lesson planning using Digital Bloom's. Today, we are going to dive a little deeper into this model and hopefully apply it to your classroom. The question that we will answer as we work through today's tutorial is, what does it look like to apply the framework of Digital Bloom's to your teaching.

So let's start with a quick review of Bloom's Taxonomy, and also apply it to Digital Bloom's Taxonomy. If you remember the revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy, from the low level thinking skills moving up the pyramid to the high level thinking skills, we have the stages of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

Now, this is a model here showing some of the digital tools that we can apply as teachers to each of the levels of thinking. Using these digital tools, we as teachers can help our students go through these levels of thinking, while at the same time using technological tools in our classroom.

When we think about aligning our outcomes using digital tools in our classroom, we might use some common digital tools like Google, Wikispaces, or Wikipedia. Maybe YouTube or Skype for some video conferencing or watching videos, and we'll talk about several more during our tutorial today.

So let's start with the application to our own teaching. We're going to talk about a lesson today that we might use in the classroom. And the goal of this lesson would be for our students to learn about different cultures. At that bottom lowest level thinking skill, the stage of remember, we might do something like have our students do a basic Google internet search to try to gather some more information on this idea of different cultures.

Moving up to the next stage, which is understand, we really want to make sure here that we are helping our students connect their learning to prior knowledge. So maybe using some advanced Google searches, adding criteria for our students to dive a little deeper into their cultures that they are doing research. We could also possibly use Skype to interview or talk with other students or classes in other cultures, which is a great tool.

Moving up to apply, what we want to do here is to provide opportunities to implement learned procedures and method. So using tools like Google Docs, or PowerPoint, or maybe a blog to create some kind of a document using the information that they have done research on and then sharing it with a group, and doing some editing of it together, starting that collaboration process so they can start to apply those ideas.

Moving up still to the analyze thinking skill, we might have our students do something like use Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to create some kind of a survey that would ask other students or other individuals what they might want to know about another culture, or what they find interesting about other cultures, or develop some kind of a questioning system that they could use even higher thinking skills in the future for some presentations.

Moving to evaluate, here, we want to help students make judgments. And we could do this by doing some collaboration activities, where students comments on blogs that they have developed. We could also do some further commenting on the Google Docs that we've created with the information that we did research on.

At the highest level thinking skill, which is create, we really want to give students an opportunity to generate ideas, design plans, and produce products, put all of that learning together into a product that shows all of their new knowledge. We might have students create a virtual field trip on wiki, or create a presentation or video to share online, maybe using YouTube.

Here, the goal would be to make a presentation and then make it available for other students to watch and provide some collaboration and feedback on. So right now, I'd like you to think about how you can change in your teaching, and let's look at this question. How can your lessons be improved using Digital Bloom's?

Think about those six levels, and the high level thinking skills that really you're wanting your students to get at, those evaluate and create at the top of the pyramid. Think about the objectives that you have for your students, and some of the lessons that you're implementing, and where those lessons and objectives fell in this pyramid.

Here, today, I want to give you some helpful tips for you in your applying Digital Bloom's. Let's start off thinking about some questions. How can I use web 2.0 tools to increase learning? And this is a question that you should ask yourself as you think about Digital Bloom's. Remember that it's not about the actual tools that you use. It's really about how those tools are used to increase your students' learning and knowledge.

Let's also think about the question, how can I differentiate instruction. When you use Digital Bloom's as a teacher, you will easily differentiate instruction based on the different levels of thinking that your students will be at, and the tools that you use within those levels.

Let's also look at the question, what are my lesson outcomes. You really want to make sure that, as you're using these web 2.0 point tools, that you are aligning the lesson outcomes to Digital Bloom's.

Today, we focused on Digital Bloom's, and creating lessons based off of that model. And what a great model Digital Bloom's is. The question that we looked at was, what does it look like to apply the framework of Digital Bloom's to your teaching. And I want you to really think of this in a very personal way. How would you use this model in your own teaching? Let's leave you with that question.

I really enjoyed discussing these important ideas with you today, and I hope that you find use for these tools and this model specifically in your very own classroom. Let's apply these ideas. What might the challenges be to applying Digital Bloom's to your own lessons? Can you think of a lesson that you can adapt by adding web 2.0 tools from 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.