7 Bloom's Taxonomy and Assistive Technology

Bloom's Taxonomy (pictured above) is, according to the textbook, "a method for categorizing differences in thinking skills; it involves six levels of cognition ranging from recall of knowledge to evaluation of knowledge." Using Bloom's Taxonomy could help me better organize my PowerPoint lessons for my future students in a way that gradually increases their knowledge to help it "stick" in the students' memories so it can be easily recalled later. For example, if my students were learning about humans harming the environment through deforestation and pollution I could set my PowerPoint up like this:

• Remember: define the topics and express the basic concepts
• Understand: students can identify from a group of images on the PowerPoint which types of actions are harmful to the environment
• Apply: break students into groups and have them brainstorm ways to solve problems that humans have created within the environment
• Analyze: have each group present their ideas to the class and then the rest of the classmates analyze the situations and decide how helpful they would be to solving environmental problems
• Evaluate: students can vouch for their ideas and weigh the pros and cons of each problem solving idea
• Create: students can use online technology or physical objects to create ways to help the environment such as building models of a sea wall to help prevent beach erosion

In the podcast, it defines assistive technologies as "technologies that help people with disabilities more effectively use computing technologies". Students who are visually impaired may use voice recognition technologies in order to have physical, typed documents because they are unable to see the keyboard to type like someone normally would. Conversely, they may also use text to speech software to read documents and literature aloud. Daily organizers are also noted as an assistive technology. They can be helpful to everyone, not just students struggling with dyslexia. I have used a daily organizer since elementary school and I would most likely forget to complete the majority of my assignments without one. I am so busy that assignments often slip my mind. I find it very helpful to have my organizer as a reminder of what I have and have not completed. Concept mapping software is an assistive technology mentioned in chapter 4 of the textbook. It helps students better view and manipulate ideas that they have brainstormed. We used this type of software recently in class to create out concept maps and I found it to be very helpful. Recorded books are another assitive technology mentioned in the textbook. These are used by dyslexic individuals, those with reading or visual impairments, and by average people. I had a friend who listened to recorded books in his car because he preferred it to listening to music. He was an avid bookworm and wanted a way to continue the books he was reading while driving, whether it was fifteen minutes to school or on a road trip. I used recorded books in high school when reading classic novels as part of my required summer reading. A lot of the topics were difficult to understand and relate to but I found it helpful to hear the story being read aloud by someone and sometimes the recording even included short explanations of what was happening in the story in more understandable phrases.

I found the web page design assignment to be extremely frustrating in the beginning. None of my changes to my site were loading in the classroom and it was not allowing me to manipulate the site well. Once I got home and started working on it I had a better time. I found Weebly to be a very easy tool to use. When I designed a web page in high school we had to do it through coding and it was a nightmare. This program made everything so much easier. I learned that class websites are a great way to interact with parents and help them feel involved. I am happy to have the knowledge of Weebly in my "teacher toolbox" for my future classroom. I loved how everyone used the same program but our websites all had such diverse design elements.

Check out my website:
http://myerssecondgrade.weebly.com/