Google Head

I admit it, I am a Google Head. My students will tell you that. The day I took off to take my daughter to the doctor after she delivered my second grandson I was there at the doctor's office but my students thought I was at “Google Fest.” When I got back to school I had to check out what “Google Fest” was all about. Go Ann Arbor!

Hope you enjoyed your flash mobs and hope you get your Google Fiber!

Anyway, my students know that Mrs. Conger uses Google and GMail, and GoogleDocs, and they also know that Mrs. Conger teaches them how to Google and will be looking over their shoulders while they Google. Friday was Crazy Hair day at my school so since I am a self professed Google Head I made it real, Google Head real. (See picture above). Now Kathy Schrock has come out with this new picture of how Google and Google Apps fit into the new revised Bloom's Taxonomy. She has been getting wonderful feedback on Twitter and Plurk for what she is calling Google Tools to support Bloom’s Revised Technology. Notice that several Google Tools fit into more than one category and notice that Google Advanced Search is considered a tool under the category of Understanding. I have been teaching my students to search using advanced search and I have been thinking that I am doing such a wonderful thing and here we are only in the category of understanding. I got depressed when I thought of all the work my students were doing and the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were going beyond understanding and applying what they knew and transferring that knowledge to new situations. They were doing things that not only met the new AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner; they were becoming 21^st Century Citizens. They were utilizing digital tools to gather information on things they wanted to learn about, they were emerging into life-long learners. Isn’t that what we want them to do? Ok, so some of them were checking the scores on the NCAA tournament but they asked my permission first! :-}

So, I am going out on a limb here and disagreeing with Kathy Schrock, but just a little. I believe that Google Advanced Search falls under more than one category. In applying advanced search principals my students are no longer using copyright sensitive materials, they are applying the skills I have taught them to make decisions regarding materials they are choosing to use in their projects and reports and for their own use. And if Google Advance Search can fit under more than one category can other Google Tools fit into more than the categories assigned? I am taking Kathy’s Google Bloom’s and using it with a grain of salt, realizing that it too is a tool!

Visual Blooms

I stumbled upon this Web2.0 App digital-visual representation of Blooms Taxonomy through a twitter tweet but it took a while to find the actual wiki it came from. This represents the levels of blooms that are hit with different web apps. If I want my students to work create, evaluate, analyze, and apply their learning. I must offer them some higher-level web apps. Some of these very web apps may be blocked by filters or considered unsafe or unreliable as sources. It is time for those of us in the library to step up and teach Internet Safety, find ways to get student accounts without the need for student e-mail addresses, teach website evaluation, teach how to properly use social networking with proper netiquette so that our students can use these web apps responsibly. Can I get a “woot” from school librarians? I don’t know about you but I want my students using Google Docs and collaborating on wikis. I want my student to blog about their research projects, to make voki books reviews, and put their digital photographs (notice I did not say pictures of themselves) up on web services like Flickr and Picassa. Come join me school librarians and let’s make digital blooms a library initiative in this new school year!