Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy is the latest update of the revised taxonomy. It mainly focuses on new technologies and their effects on learning, including the resultant actions and behaviors as technology becomes more advanced and readily available (Churches, n.d.). However, it does not concentrate on the available technologies and tools but on how they can be utilized to facilitate learning and improve the learning outcome.
The connection of Bloom’s taxonomy to academic writing is easy to identify. It is connected to academic writing because it utilizes the same techniques to remember certain facts and figures. Like literary writing, Bloom’s Taxonomy uses digital means to record, find, organize, and retrieve important information. Moreover, it utilizes various other techniques often used in academic writing, such as paraphrasing, summarising, inferring, classifying, explaining, comparing, and exemplifying, among others.
The higher output skills are connected to critical thinking because they are linked to various mental processes such as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The academic writing process is divided into four stages: research, planning, writing, and finalizing. It starts when an individual undertakes some research on a certain topic or issue of concern. It involves finding information about the topic at hand. The second stage is the planning stage, where collected data is sorted to develop an outline for writing. The third stage involves the actual writing process that produces the written work. The final step is when the complete draft is checked for spelling and style mistakes, including grammar, through the proofreading process. Critical thinking is integral to the whole writing process because of the integration of personal ideas and notions at every stage.
Critical thinking in writing can be derived from the notion that learning occurs linearly and hierarchically. Simple learning involves having solid knowledge, comprehension, and application. However, when learners want to engage in creative and sophisticated learning that requires analysis, evaluation, and synthesis, they must apply critical thinking (Nentl & Zietlow, 2008). This model applies to all levels of education, including cross-disciplinary use in social sciences, business, and other applied sciences.
Simulations can also be integrated into the course curriculum since they have the potential to move learners through complex situations. They also motivate students to adapt, assimilate, anchor, and evaluate volumes of previously stored information. The learning barrier can also be broken to promote critical thinking by teaching students how to conduct quality secondary research. Such an undertaking encourages them to think critically and prevents them from replicating information. The use of secondary research methods can help students to analyze information instead of copying the same. They can also know how to combine data with other information to develop a new understanding of the situation.
Moreover, they can use this new information to measure the authenticity and integrity of a source. Students need to know that the school library is an important source of secondary reports and articles that are more valuable than those found online. They must be able to find the right information, analyze it and consolidate it to make it even more relevant. In this regard, students can use their critical thinking skills to judge the authenticity or veracity of a source. The usage of secondary sources is important in conducting secondary research which helps students to develop their critical thinking capacity.
References
Churches, A. (n.d.) ‘Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy’, Educational Origami. Web.
Nentl, N. and Zietlow, R. (2008) Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Teach Critical Thinking Skills to Business Students, College and Undergraduate Libraries, 15(1-2), pp.159-172. Web.