Bl-oogle???

That's my poor attempt at a word blend for Bloom and Google. Here's why. I am working with my team to become a sort of school within a school. We want our team to move ahead when it comes to technology integration. I came across this great blog post by Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) on his blog Free Technology for Teachers. By the way, this is an incredible site for resources! He is actually sharing the work of another amazing blogger and tech-leader, Kathy Schrock.

Anyway, back to Bloogle. As my team is figuring out how to best integrate technology in order to create the optimal learning experience for our students, we are finding ourselves stuck between an overwhelming number of resources and trying to figure out how to use those resources most effectively. In trying to incorporate technology, we don't want to lose sight of learning objectives, standards, and anchors because--well, let's be honest--the kids must do well on the test! I hate admitting that.

I take a lot of time to teach my students Bloom's levels of understanding. I challenge them to take their own learning and understanding to the next level...and they do! Yet I also tend to overwhelm them with technology tools. I try to show them Web2.0 possibilities, but it gets lost when we jump from program to program to achieve different outcomes. They are overwhelmed by passwords and account creation...in fact, that takes up a great deal of our class time.

I am a big fan of Google and believe that they are leading the way when it comes to integrating tools and content. I am excited to say that my school finally took the jump to allow each student a Google account! now, we can use these great programs with them. One user name, one password. Consistency!

Then, I read Richard Byrne's blog about Kathy Schrock's Google Bloom's Taxonomy!

She has created a resource where you can see which Google tools support different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. I especially love that each icon is a button that takes you directly to the program! Very useful. This is something I would share with the teachers on my team, but also with my students. In fact, we just had a discussion this morning about how we do not want to use technology to deliver information, but let the kids use the technology to demonstrate their learning to us...duh. As if this is new. We just want to keep reminding ourselves.