2.4: Higher Order Thinking Skills
Candidates model and facilitate the effective use of digital tools and resources to support and enhance higher order thinking skills (e.g., analyze, evaluate, and create); processes (e.g., problem-solving, decision-making); and mental habits of mind (e.g., critical thinking, creative thinking, metacognition, self-regulation, and reflection). (PSC 2.4/ISTE 2d)
Artifact: ITEC 7445 - Multimedia Design - A Webquest
This artifact was created for an International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) Year 3 (8th Grade) class who were studying aspects of demographics and world development in Geography. This artifact was created by myself and shared with the Individuals and Societies Year 3 teaching team as a short Unit of Inquiry that would address the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). This artifact is aligned to Standard 2.4 Higher Order Thinking Skills, as the students were presented with research concerning the MDG’s and centered their summative assessment based on their diverse understanding of those MDG’s by analyzing, evaluating and creating a synthesized presentation of their findings. Students also had the opportunity to exercise critical thinking skills by discerning three MDG’s that would be pertinent post-2015, providing an opportunity for creative thinking in their presentations. Students in MYP Year 2 (7th Grade) study approaches to learning skills in MYP that focus on synthesizing information to create a presentation (use of PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Presentation). To draw in some of these presentation skills for appropriate slide content, and use for a live presentation (both in this discipline and other subject areas), students also created their final presentation for a deadline (self-regulation) and used blogging as a method of reflection. These skills were further augmented in this Year 3 class by giving the students the opportunity to learn the skill of using screen casting using either Jing or QuickTime.
Students were presented with research based statistics and information concerning each one of the eight MDG’s in various regions of the world. A Web Quest was designed to guide their thinking through the process to the summative assessment outcomes.
This Web Quest was designed with the objective that the student summative task to investigate an assigned part of the world pertaining to that region’s progress in meeting their MDG’s. Through the process stages, the student was introduced to various levels of data through diverse videos, online reports and databases. I used thinking strategies from Project Zero Visible Thinking, for example, “See, Think, Wonder” to help the student enhance their higher order thinking skills from the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy to reach their aims of analyzing this data to suggest or infer what goals might need to go beyond 2015 and what new goals might need to be put into place for certain regions. Students created a final screen cast of their presentation to be included in their Personal Interactive Portfolio (PIP), where they habitually place evidences of their summative assessment tasks with both peer and teacher feedback for future reference to their growth across the MYP Assessment Criteria in Individuals and Societies.
In completing this Web Quest and deploying it with the Year 3 students in their class, they iterated that they liked the logical layout and how each of the activities built to their final summative assessment task in a cumulative way. A habit of mind that the students developed over the course of the task was to work with a peer to edit their presentations, without teacher intervention. The purpose of this was to enable the student to practice giving and receiving good and concise feedback for personal improvement to reach the higher levels on the assigned assessment rubric. To improve the quality of this experience for the students, next time I assign the Unit of Inquiry, I will afford additional classroom time for the collaborative work and peer assessment process. It would also be conducive to give the students the opportunity to experience and experiment with Google Hangouts to augment their experience in giving feedback using synchronous online meeting spaces. Exposing them to digital technology that overcomes the need to be in the classroom will enhance those mental states of mind to continually improve even beyond the bricks and mortar and hopefully improve the quality and quantity of student feedback.
Students evaluated their work through their blog posts and discussed their outcomes with each other in written form using the comments section of their blogs. One way to augment this blogging experience for the students would be the addition of a teacher blog during the unit to sum up or pull together some of their findings as the class progresses.
Having blogs has impacted school improvement in general. As I moved into an instructional technologist role in the 2014 – 15 school year, the biggest demand in terms of facilitating digital learning has been through blogging, especially with language teachers. This might lead to some discipline specific professional development in this remit, with the impact assessed in how the students use their blogs to communicate and develop their language skills in a written form.
Students were presented with research based statistics and information concerning each one of the eight MDG’s in various regions of the world. A Web Quest was designed to guide their thinking through the process to the summative assessment outcomes.
This Web Quest was designed with the objective that the student summative task to investigate an assigned part of the world pertaining to that region’s progress in meeting their MDG’s. Through the process stages, the student was introduced to various levels of data through diverse videos, online reports and databases. I used thinking strategies from Project Zero Visible Thinking, for example, “See, Think, Wonder” to help the student enhance their higher order thinking skills from the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy to reach their aims of analyzing this data to suggest or infer what goals might need to go beyond 2015 and what new goals might need to be put into place for certain regions. Students created a final screen cast of their presentation to be included in their Personal Interactive Portfolio (PIP), where they habitually place evidences of their summative assessment tasks with both peer and teacher feedback for future reference to their growth across the MYP Assessment Criteria in Individuals and Societies.
In completing this Web Quest and deploying it with the Year 3 students in their class, they iterated that they liked the logical layout and how each of the activities built to their final summative assessment task in a cumulative way. A habit of mind that the students developed over the course of the task was to work with a peer to edit their presentations, without teacher intervention. The purpose of this was to enable the student to practice giving and receiving good and concise feedback for personal improvement to reach the higher levels on the assigned assessment rubric. To improve the quality of this experience for the students, next time I assign the Unit of Inquiry, I will afford additional classroom time for the collaborative work and peer assessment process. It would also be conducive to give the students the opportunity to experience and experiment with Google Hangouts to augment their experience in giving feedback using synchronous online meeting spaces. Exposing them to digital technology that overcomes the need to be in the classroom will enhance those mental states of mind to continually improve even beyond the bricks and mortar and hopefully improve the quality and quantity of student feedback.
Students evaluated their work through their blog posts and discussed their outcomes with each other in written form using the comments section of their blogs. One way to augment this blogging experience for the students would be the addition of a teacher blog during the unit to sum up or pull together some of their findings as the class progresses.
Having blogs has impacted school improvement in general. As I moved into an instructional technologist role in the 2014 – 15 school year, the biggest demand in terms of facilitating digital learning has been through blogging, especially with language teachers. This might lead to some discipline specific professional development in this remit, with the impact assessed in how the students use their blogs to communicate and develop their language skills in a written form.