Welcome back to the techification (new word!) of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Today, I’ll be discussing the “Apply” and “Analyze” levels of the Taxonomy.
Let’s get started.
I personally feel that the “apply” level is EXTREMELY important in my classroom, and I’m sure you agree. I want to students to be able to remember and understand the bill to law process, but what I really want them to be able to do is take that knowledge and USE IT! I’ve listed some tools below that can help you techify the “Apply” level of the taxonomy:
- iCivics
- iCivics is an AMAZING program spearheaded by former Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor. During her tenure on the high Court, O’Connor realized that the youth of our country were falling into a terrible category…people who don’t care about our democratic system and therefore do not participate in it. In an attempt to get young people excited about civics, O’Connor and her team put together this incredible tool which provides students with MEANINGFUL games to help them apply their knowledge of civics in a fun, creative way. I have used iCivics games in my classes with resounding success. Telling students that they have to log off of their computers and make more laws another day is a wonderful problem to have! iCivics as well as other gamified learning tools can help students apply their knowledge of content and have fun doing it!
- Fetchnotes
- I recently discovered this note-taking and organizational tool, and I am in love. How can students use this in the “Apply” level you ask? Students can classify important terms and concepts using the awesome “hashtag” feature. Students can use their hashtagged notes to construct their own understanding of a concept.
- Kahoot It
- This is probably the coolest game-based tool that I have seen. It’s fun. It’s exciting. The students LOVE it! Teachers can create gamified quizzes, discussions, or surveys for their students to use in practicing a specific concept. Students can create games for their class to demonstrate their knowledge of the objective and engage their classmates in an activity.
The next level, “Analyze” requires students to take their knowledge of material one step further. Instead of just reading words on a page, we want our students to analyze those words…thinking about the meaning of the words, the perspective of the author, the time period of the work, the personal biases, etc. Below are some tools I use to help with the “Analyze” level of the taxonomy:
- Google Docs
- Google Docs is seriously an awesome tool for students and teachers. My favorite Add-on for this level of Bloom’s is probably the Texthelp Study Skills tool. Teachers can share text with students…say the Federalist 51…and students can actively read the document, analyzing and examining as they trudge through the document. If teachers have used Doctopus to create folders for their students, teachers can send the document to view to student’s individual assignment folders, a task which creates an individual copy for each student. Since Doctopus creates this individual copy for each student, teachers can require students to post comments on the document which will hopefully help them in analyzing the text. Teachers could also send out one document for the entire class through Doctopus, giving each student commenting rights, which would allow the students to collaborate and share ideas with each other!
- Listhings
- Students can post “sticky notes” on their listhings corkboard that describe their perspectives, beliefs, or questions about a specific reading. Students can then compare their ideas with those of their classmates, working together to construct a new conclusion about the topic.
- Mindmeister
- This Google Doc Add-on allow students to transform a bulleted list into a mind map. Students could use this tool to create a list that categorizes important terms or distinguishes concepts or main ideas. This is another GREAT Google Docs Add-on!
These are just a few classroom tech tools that can help with assessing the taxonomy. Check back for part four of techifying the taxonomy…coming soon!
Thanks for reading 🙂
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