Put the Kibosh on Bloom's APPortunities

I read yet another blog post this morning about sorting and parsing APPs and Web 2.0 tools according to Bloom’s Levels. Back in 2009, I created a Bloom’s Pyramid of Web 2.0 tools and did the same sorting and parsing. Almost immediately, it was apparent that I did this wrong. (Which I discovered as I conversed and thought this through with my Digital PLN!) However, it sparked a conversation, a REALLY good conversation, about the thinking that goes into how a tool is being used as well as the importance of the TASK behind it. The wiki is still open that I collaboratively created with @paulawhite if you’d like to visit.

Since 2009, the images have been copied, remixed, recreated, added to, expanded, and more. However, the same flaw still exists:

Putting a web tool or APP somewhere on the hierarchy is useless. It does not represent the intention of critical thinking levels in any form, whether it’s Bloom’s or Webb’s DOK levels, or Costa’s Thinking Levels. Whatever is being used, is being used in the wrong way.

The real critical thinking revolves around understanding how to use a Web tool or APP at ALL OF THE LEVELS. All the charts and images are cute, but they don’t represent a real transfer of thinking at the applied level.

Let’s start a new conversation, perhaps by adding comments to the CONTRIBUTE area of the Visual Bloom’s Wiki, or by commenting here. I can start importing those suggestions into WIX and expanding the interactivity of the Digital Visual Bloom’s.  If the web tool or APP is not on the CONTRIBUTE list already, you can add it yourself and we can crowdsource this larger conversation.

Leveling web tools and APPs is past-thinking. Understanding how the tools and APPs live on multiple levels is future-thinking. What we did back then was good, and now that we know better, let’s make it happen!


Mike on Twitter: @fisher1000

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