Theories of Critical Thinking

It's interesting to note that as technology changes, so do the needs of our students. As students adapt to changes in their world, their educational needs must be met. Technology makes this significantly more easy, allowing teachers to provide accommodations to students and meet them where they are. This easy access to learning also allows for a deeper understanding of the content. However, with these changes, we must teach students to become responsible digital citizens in an age where access to information is all too easy.

As an educator, the well-known Bloom's Taxonomy is a staple. However, in recent years, even this model has changed in order to match what students are being required to do in the classroom. The addition of "Creating" to the highest levels of the model, are no doubt the result of technologies that allow students to easily become producers in their own way (Huitt, 2011). In my own classroom, honestly, I see the need to reinforce more strongly the beginning steps of the model, before pushing ahead to the level of creating. I really benefited from the matrix combining Bloom's and Gardner's theories in a real world classroom (Kuhn, 2008). It was helpful to see concrete examples of how these different types of intelligences could be displayed at different levels of understanding.

With the rise in technology, it's imperative that we teach students how to be responsible when they're creating. My school has always had an advisement program to encourage students to be responsible citizens. However, it's only been in recent years that digital citizenship has been integrated into the curriculum.  One of the biggest concepts that I took away from "Empowering Learners with Digital and Media Literacy," is the importance of teaching students to evaluate and analyze the information they take in online (Hobbs, 2011). In the age of "clickbait" these skills are huge, and they also incorporate, in a sense, the principles of Bloom's Taxonomy.

In my own day-to-day life, it's easy to use technology as simply a means to an end. However, these texts have reiterated the importance and the possibility of using it as a tool to create a deeper level of understanding.