Tuesday, February 25, 2014

PLE on an iPad

Chambers, Julia
Blooms Taxonomy With Apps. (2014). TeachwithyouriPad [Web]. Retrieved from http://teachwithyouripad.wikispaces.com/Blooms+Taxonomy+with+Apps

This is an interesting piece about using Blooms Taxonomy to organize apps on an iPad. The apps are categorized into Blooms’ six different levels of thinking: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. The Remembering section includes apps such as Flash Cards, Spelling Bug, Life Cycles. Analyzing includes such apps as Noterize, DataAnalysis, and StatViz. Creating includes Comics Creator, iMovie, and Build a Story. It refers to another Website called bloomsapps that offers even more detail and suggestions for this type of organization.

Evaluation: I was really interested in this idea as a model for student PLEs. In the 1-to-1 school where I work, students all have iPads. Some have organized their apps into folders, others seem to have no organization at all. If students were to develop thematic app screens or thematic folders, they would begin to curate their own learning environment with their primary information tool. However, as appealing as the Bloom Taxonomy approach is to me, I don’t think it makes sense as a model for a student’s PLE because students don’t think to organize this way. They might not think that using an online mindmapping tools is a tool for “Understanding” or “Applying”. They just use it because they are required to or because they find value in it for certain tasks. A better form of student organization for iPad apps might be by task (note-taking; reading; gaming; visual productions) or by course (math facts; stats calculator, fractions, etc.)