Blog Post 2 Curriculum Frameworks

Blog Post 2 Curriculum Frameworks

                Module 2 of our class dealt with Curriculum Frameworks within the modern classroom. This module has helped me connect Bloom’s Taxonomy to 21^st-century skills in the two following ways. 

                The first curriculum framework is Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. This framework is an expansion upon Dr. Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy first created in 1956. Dr. Bloom created this framework to help educators better understand how to educate their students. This modern digital taxonomy was updated in the late 1990s in order to be more relevant to the 21^st century. Bloom’s Taxonomy has often been shown as a pyramid with each step of the pyramid being a more complex level of cognitive thinking.  

                From bottom to top these five levels are: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating. During the revision to the pyramid in the late 1990’s, synthesize and evaluate were switched around from the 1956 version. Modern educators have also suggested that a pyramid is not the right way to think about Bloom’s Taxonomy. Instead they have suggested alternative ideas to replace the pyramid. These ideas include: a series of moving cogs which are all interconnected, an orange where all sides are equal, or a flipped pyramid with evaluating being at the bottom.

                The modern digital taxonomy has expanded upon Blooms’. New action verbs have been added onto each level of the taxonomy. For example, evaluating has been expanded upon to include: designing, inventing, constructing, blogging and programing. Another suggestion for educators is to add technology to each level of Blooms’. For example, in the remembering stage, educators are encouraged to use flash card apps for helping students to remember vocabulary words. However, teachers need to be careful not to let the technology be abused. The focus should always be on how tools are used as new ways for students to learn.

                The second curriculum framework is the 4 C’s. These 4 C’s are: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. This curriculum was concerned with how technology played a role in teaching in a modern classroom. It also asked the reader to question how students learning could be affected by technology in the classroom. In the video, students who graduated high school with skills in the 4 C’s were said to do better in the modern world.

Each of the 4 C’s was broken down into key concepts. Critical thinking involved analyzing, and the ability to solve problems.  Communication was focused around sharing information while expressing their own thoughts and opinions clearly to others. Collaboration was where students would work together with others to accomplish a goal while being flexible and sharing responsibilities. Lastly, creativity was allowing for students to brainstorm and refine their ideas and encouraging students to be responsive to the ideas from others.

In my own classroom, I will use the 4 C’s to help students become more involved in their own learning. It is important that a student feels invested in their learning. The more involved the student is in their own learning, the more interested they will become in the topic.  Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy will also allow me to integrate technology into my lessons. I will be able to use the taxonomy in order to help my students learn more about the historical content. With the technology, my students will be better able to learn about people, places, and events that we will be discussing.