John Sowash had quite a discussion happening at his website, The Electric Educator, on how and why to Google-Proof a Question, using Bloom's Taxonomy.
What does that title suggest to you? John Sowash has a terrific web post that has turned into an even more in depth conversation.
When I read the title and the post I immediately thought about our digital learners.
Our digital learners learn and participate differently. Think of how we learned about reading comprehension. We read a book as a class, we had the teacher ask us probing questions and if there was time, possibly six students got to answer the questions. Even in a small group of students, reflecting on a book, there will be more than a few in the group who will not speak because they are fearful.
However, fast forward to a book talk by blogging. Our students today can go further, by posting a comment or replying to a comment on a blog or ning, there is pride that their comment is valued. When blogging students have time to be thoughtful and then write their comment , they are published and that goes further than writing for their teacher. The best part is that students can speak out and reply anytime of day, night or weekend. This is a powerful concept for our young writers.
The Google it! mode of education today should force all educators to let go of the notion that we hold the keys to knowledge. Instead we are facilitators of knowledge. If a question can be answered by Googling it, then that question should not be the first question we ask. Those answers are for rote memorization, which our computers do quite efficiently. The computer gets the A+! However, when we pose challenges such as , Using all the biome category headers, write a poem, using vocabulary to illustrate the biome and be sure to address the interconnectedness among all the biomes, we lead our digital learners to the types of thinking, creating and uncovering of material where answers are thoughtful, reflective and tested.
Can you Google-proof your question? Leave a question here and share how you would do this in your classroom.
Resources:
What do we know about great instruction ?
A Bloom's Taxonomy wheel:
A new Bloom's Taxonomy
Bloom's and ICT
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjoselibrary/2800674717/ San Jose Library
