Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy: Evaluating

This was a challenging one for me but I ended up realizing that I am already requiring the college students in my middle school methods class to evaluate information as participants in a class WIKI.  The WIKI is dedicated to two assignments that the students are required to complete.  One is their individual philosophy of middle school and the other is a team based project that is the culmination of the semester's work.  In this assignment, team's are given the project of developing a presentation on what they believe would be the ideal middle school.

The WIKI was created as a collaborative site for the students to review material that I have posted as a reference for them and to share readings that they themselves have done as a part of their membership in the National Middle School Association.  The goal is that they use the readings of their classmates as a resource for developing their own personal philosophy as well as their ideal middle school presentation.  Here is the link to this semester's Ideal Middle School WIKI (specifically the page where I am sharing information.)

Objective:

• Students will collaborate with others by sharing information discovered through professional readings.
  
  
• Students will evaluate information shared on the WIKI to use (or not) in their personal philosophy of middle school and in their ideal middle school presentation. 

Assessment:

I have a rubric that I developed to evaluate contributions made by individual students (basically the number and kind of summaries that they contribute), but the WIKI contributions will also be assessed in the information used by students in their individual philosophy and their team ideal middle school presentation.  How well students support their philosophy and their ideal middle school will be evidence of their successful evaluation of the material shared on the WIKI.

This has potential to be a powerful opportunity for students to evaluate the information placed on the WIKI by other students as well as by me.  This semester, I don't see that it is being used as effectively as it could and that will be something that I need to addresss more in the future by focusing on the WIKI contributions and their value more often during the semester.