Turning Bloom’s and My Thinking Upside Down

The Blooming Butterfly poster by Learning Today is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

I recently attended the Saskatchewan IT Summit where I had the privilege to take in a session by Shelly Wright entitled Rethinking Learning.  Shelly shared with us her vision of leaning in an inquiry based, technology enhanced classroom.  The big learning I took from this session was Shelly’s take on the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy.  She simply stated that it was wrong.  WHAT????…..I have been a big proponent of the taxonomy for a long time and here was a person I respect and admire saying it was wrong.  This powerful and succinct statement gave me pause, made me stop, pay attention and listen for her justification.

Shelly went on to say that our  perception has been that we learn by starting with remembering a concept, so that we can understand it.  Then we can apply our learning to new situations, analyze, evaluating and finally at the end use our learning to create. 

But what if…

What if we started with creating?  What if students could start with creativity and end with the knowledge that emerges from their creations?  What if student creations allowed them to evaluate,analyse, apply, understand and finally come to know?  What if this knowledge was driven not by the textbook or the teacher but by the students themselves through the creation process? 

Shelly’s flip has been stuck in my head all week.  It has influenced my thinking and my learning.  It has led me to start rethinking.  Hmmm…what if?