Here is one quote from the article

“In Denmark, the government has taken the bold step of allowing pupils full access to the internet during their final school year exams.
A total of 14 colleges in Denmark are piloting the new system of exams and all schools in the country have been invited to join the scheme by 2011.”

Doesn’t this make sense? Isn’t this reflective of what we expect our graduate to do? Isn’t this preparing them for the future?

Many, many schools have invest huge amounts of time, effort and money in integrating the use of technology in the classroom. It is clear that this investment is as valuable as teaching students to write was in the pen and papers days of the mid 20th century. Technology should be ubiquitous. Do we say to students you must learn how write with a pen and then give them a crayon in an examination?

Now the technology they are discussing here is so much more than a pen and paper, a mere means of communication. We all know the power of the internet, the facilities inherent in a spreadsheet or a word processor, the tools for communication in an instant, synchronously anywhere anytime.

Here is another quote…

“One of the teachers stands in front of the class and explains the rules. She tells the candidates they can use the internet to answer any of the four questions.
They can access any site they like, even Facebook, but they cannot message each other or email anyone outside the classroom”

In the “real” world beyond the gates of the classroom memorization of all knowledge is not a per-requiste and  what is valued is Information fluency, the ability to:

• identify
• access
• process
• present
• and suitably cite and reference

pertinent and appropriate information. To do this you MUST have a good depth of knowledge. The Danish in this trial have realised that the ability to research and process is key. You can guarantee that the questions asked in the examination will be one requiring higher order thinking skills (See Blooms Digital taxonomy). These questions will not require memorization, definitions or simple regurgitation of facts. Rather these lower order thinking skills will be inherent in the Analysis, Evaluation and Creativity expected in the probing and challenging questions set.

There is also an element of trust, ownership and responsibility too in their approach. “The main precaution is that we trust them. I think the cheat rate is very low because the consequences of cheating are very big.”

In trusting them, our students, it implies you have developed a relationship with them. They are not just number in a class, they are not just contributors to your workload. In trusting them and placing the onus of responsibility on them the students are owners of their learning. (see the digital citizen)

I will watch this process with interest, as for me this approach ticks many of the boxes of 21st century learning and assessment.

I feel incredibly honoured and I really hope this will be of assistance to teachers and learners. Further resources and material will be added as they become available.

I have uploaded the PDF version of the spanish translation to the educational origami wiki at http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

Many thanks Claudia!

This tools analyses the taxonomic level of the learning activity, task or unit. The process is essentially similar to the Bloom’s Assessment Analysis Tool. This tool allows you to look at a simple overview of the activity or unit and provides a simple perspective on task construction. The optional extension of the tool requires you to enter the estimated time spent on each task element and then to calculate a percentage of total time spent on each taxonomic level.

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/Blooms+activity+analysis+2.pdf

Related Links:

Bloom’s Digital taxonomy – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

Bloom’s and assessment – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+and+Assessment

Bloom’s Analysis Tools – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Analysis+Tools

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy – Rubrics – http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Rubrics+-+Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

I have revised the tool and included an instruction sheet for the analysis. The tool is prepared under the creative commons share and share-alike licience. Here is the pdf file of the assessment sheet.

blooms-and-assessment-21 (PDF)

As usual comments and suggestions are appreciated.

This tool is an attempt to analyse the structure of examinations and tests and look at the balance between higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and lower order thinking skills (LOTS). Many examinations have a large influence on lower order thinking skills like remembering and understanding and a low emphasis on higher order thinking processes of analysis, evaluation and creativity.

The process in using this tool is as follows;

• work through the questions and add the mark value for each question to the appropriate column
• total each column and then total the mark value in each category (Taxonomic level)
• Calculate the percentage of the test which is based at each taxonomic level.

I don’t believe there are no right or wrong values or weightings. However, we know that higher order thinking skills and processes are preferable to lower order thinking skills like fact recall or simple repetition of definitions.

Here is the assessment analysis tool as a pdf – blooms-and-assessment

I would appreciate comments and feedback.

The idea is that you take your activity and break it down into the component elements and match these against the different taxonomic levels and the learning actions.

For example if you looked at students constructing a wiki

• Editing the wiki is applying
• Searching for the information  – remembering
• Tagging the pages with suitable and detailed keywords and notes is understanding
• Validating the information is evaluating
• Uploading the resources to the wiki is applying
• Collaborating and networking is a higher order skill

and so on

Here is the PDF version of this tool – blooms-activity-analysis

This is a first draft and I would appreciate comments and suggestions.

Its great to see teachers experimenting and playing, something most teachers do not do enough of. Most staff just don’t have the time, which is a pity as you learn so much by playing.

Anyway here is the video. thanks Kelli, you made my day

Higher order thinking skills like analysis, evaluation and creativity incorperate lower order thinking skills like remembering, understanding and applying. We aim to teach and facilitate higher order thinking skills in our teaching, knowing that these higher order skills will scaffold better learning and ownership of concepts and processes. But what do we examine when we set our students tests or examination?

If we look at our tests and examinations are they focused toward Higher Order or Lower Order Thinking skills? Are the assessment tasks and questions open or closed?

We are required to assess our students to:

• measure their progress,
• to track their learning,
• to identify weakness
• to measure our own performance as educators.

Parents need a measure of their childrens progress, politicians and administrators need to measure how their money is being spent. Assessment, often in the form of tests and examinations, is used for all of this. This is not wrong but Assessment should primarily be for learning (Well done AFL)

This raises some fundemental questions about our assessment systems

• Do our assessment systems do our students justice?
• Do the assessment systems reflect our students learning?
• Do they reflect the higher order thinking skills that we should be teaching our students in the 21st Century?
• Is a 3 hour test a fair reflection on a years or semesters work?
• Does a test or examination adequately prepare our students for work? How many workplaces have examinations as a measure of performance?

Does a one, two or three hour examination, sat in isolation from information sources and reference give a student adequate time to develop analysis, evaluate and be creative? To reflect critically on a year or mores work? Is it realistic to expect a student to complete these in close book format, when in the “real world” they would have a plethera of resources at their finger tips?

We know that in the knowledge economy of the 21st Century, Higher order thinking skills are valued and are indeed essential. But, do our assessments reflect higher or lower order thinking?

Key verbs in Bloom’s and 3 story Intellect

If we look at Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy or perhaps its simplified cousin the Art Costa’s Three Story Intellect, many of the verbs we associate with examination and test questions reflect lower order thinking skills.

Common key verbs in examinations

What are the key verbs we use in our examinations. I examine several examinations recently and these were the key verbs.

• list (Remembering)
• state (Remembering)
• identify (Remembering)
• name (Remembering)
• describe (Remembering)
• comment (Understanding)
• discuss (Understanding)
• explain (Understanding)
• exemplify (Understanding)
• compare (Analyse)
• analyse (Analyse)
• evaluate (Evaluate)

These are predominently lower order thinking skills. Examinations can be a poor tool to measure higher order thinking.

Fortunately, examinations are not the only form of assessment we use with our students, but do the other types of assessment actually reflect Higher Order Thinking. Do the assessment tasks reflect the higher order goals and objectives or are they more of the same.

Do we put suitable emphasis on:

• developing a hypothesis (Evaluating)
• experimenting (Evaluating)
• planning (Creating)
• designing (Creating)
• judging and evaluating (Evaluating)
• producing and making (Creating)
• critiquing, reviewing and testing (Evaluating)
• refining (Creating)
• mixing and remixing (Creating)

These can not be easily tested adequately in an examination or test

Remembering

Understanding

Applying

Analysing

Evaluating

Creating

The robotics sessions in Rotorua, were great fun, hands on experiences. As tools for learning and constructing knowledge and understanding they are superb.

In Wellington, I had the privilege of talking to the teachers at The Correspondence school. They have embarked on an exciting journey which matches their motto “Learner centred, digitally minded”. They are undergoing a paradigm shift from a traditional distance education approach, predominantly paper based to a 21st century approach maintaining and building on the existing model.

The four groups I spoke to (TCS has 4 teaching regions – Northern, central north, central south and southern) were each different, but an underlying theme that came through from my presentation and also from their comments and questions was Digital citizenship. This theme was also clearly evident when I spoke at the Marlborough Teachers only day on Thursday.

Wednesday saw me in Upper Hutt, I met with a school implementing First Class into there school and we talked through the process of preparation, release to staff and students, barriers and drivers. These guys were good and it was fun to be able to share the tricks of using First Class and the processes that had or had not worked in our experience of rolling this product out. The two or three key themes that came out were:

• The importance of buy in and complete commitment from management
• making life easier and simpler is a key driver for staff
• the kids will adapt more easily than the staff

Thursday in Blenhiem was a chilly start with the hills having there first dusting of snow, pretty but enough to make me duck back into the motel to find my jacket. I did two sessions here – the first was a favour – a handful of the best free or open source tools for education. There are some brilliant ones out there like:

• Audacity
• Freemind
• C-map
• Cartoonist
• Shape collage
• Open Office
• Scribus
• Microsoft’s photostory
• The Gimp
• The rasterbator
• Read Please 2003

The second session was a small group talking about web 2.0 and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of this amazing array of tools. This is were digital citizenship came through again, there is a need for direction and discussion on this whole aspect of education.

With some much of what we teach, irrelevant or obsolete by the time our students leave school, the most important aspects of teaching (in my opinion) is learning how to learn, develop a passion for learning, building an ethical base to make decisions on, thinking skills and values.

It was great to catch up with Mike, Rajen, Amanda, Mildie, Rachael and Suzie. And it would have been nice to say hi to Warren but he was a little busy.