Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Bloom’s Taxonomy

by

Bloom’s Taxonomy is the most important education framework and every teacher needs to know how to use it in their class! Find out here!

Follow me on X/Twitter for more: twitter.com/niall_mcnulty_

Who was Benjamin Bloom?

Benjamin Samuel Bloom (February 21, 1913 – September 13, 1999) was an American educational psychologist who examined and then restructured the way teaching should be approached, to maximise learners’ performance. His book, The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals (1956), set out a series of learning objectives that became known as Bloom’s taxonomy. It continues to impact the way educational curricula are structured to this day. Bloom’s taxonomy divided learning into three psychological domains – cognitive (processing information), affective (attitudes and feelings) and psychomotor (physical skills). 

Read more

Computational thinking in African schools

by

At the recent Innovation Africa conference, many African educational ministries discussed ‘readying’ their learners for the much-hyped 4th Industrial Revolution and developing 21st Century Skills to advance their economies. These skills are an undefined issue, which many education ministries are attempting to solve through providing digital content and devices in the hope that these skills are acquired as a side effect of technology usage. In Botswana, the MOBE initiated a pilot of digital devices and content, with Microsoft and partners, to foster these skills.

In Zimbabwe, a new curriculum is rolling out with a subject Internet Communication Technology, including basic digital literacy as well as sections on digital citizenship and coding skills. The recent curriculum reform in Ghana sees a strong focus on ICT-integration and a new subject, Computing, which covers ICT (operating a computer, word processing, databases, etc.) and internet skills. Nigeria is a tech-aspirational market with a keen interest in internet technology and the entrepreneurial opportunities it offers. In South Africa, the message around the 4th Industrial Revolution is consistently reiterated through government as well as party political communication channels as well as ongoing communication from the Department of Basic Education.

South African Coding and Robotics Curriculum

According to the basic education minister, Angie Motshekga, the South African government is developing curricula for coding and robotics for grades R to 9 to create sustainable industrialisation and keep pace with the world.

Computation thinking in South Africa – driven by coding and robotics

Read more

Learning with mobile devices

by

A comparison of four mobile learning pilots in Africa

For the past few years, I have been involved in several projects aimed at delivering education via mobile devices. These include providing local language (for many African languages) children’s reading books to Worldreader for distribution on feature phones, developing a bilingual maths dictionary Android app for isiXhosa learners, and supporting the Gauteng Education Department’s Paperless Classroom digital rollout by providing textbooks on tablets via the Snapplify e-reader. These projects all involved repurposing existing print material for use on a mobile device, so I was very interested in reading Shafika Isaacs, Nicky Roberts and Garth Spencer-Smith’s recent paper (in the South African Journal of Education) where they compared four mobile learning projects across Africa.

Read more