202107282144 Bloom's taxonomy of knowledge

One of the three sections of 202110260923 Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. The taxonomy of knowledge focuses on the cognitive (knowledge-based) domain of development.¹

All knowledge is built on prior knowledge, so I shouldn't worry about feeling like I'm only creating a collection of other people ideas. I can apply bloom's taxonomy to these ideas you've collected.²

Remember

Knowledge involves remembering facts, terms, basic concepts, or answers without necessarily understanding what they mean. One can remember specifics (terms or facts), ways and means of dealing with specifics (conventions, trends, categories), or universals and abstractions (principles, generalizations, theories, or structures).

Example: "Name three common varieties of apple."

Understand

We then have to demonstrate an understanding of the facts and ideas by organizing, summarizing, translating, generalizing, giving descriptions, or stating main ideas.

Example: "Summarize the identifying characteristics of a Golden Delicious and a Granny Smith apple."

Apply

After understanding comes application. We use our acquired knowledge to solve problems in new situations. We should be able to use our prior knowledge to solve problems, identify connections and relationships, and understand how the knowledge does or does not apply in this new situation.

Example: "Would apples prevent scurvy, a disease caused by a deficiency in vitamin C?"

Analyze

Analysis involves examining and breaking information into component parts, determining how the parts relate to one another, identifying motives or causes, making inferences, and finding evidence to support generalizations. We can analyze elements, relationships, and organization.

Example: "Compare and contrast four ways of service foods made with apples and examine which ones have the highest health benefits."

Evaluate

We present and defend opinions by making judgements about information, validity of ideas, and quality of work based on a set of criteria. We can judge things in terms of internal evidence or external criteria.

Example: "Which kinds of apples are suitable for baking a pie, and why?"

Create

Creation involves building a structure or pattern from diverse elements and putting parts together to form a whole. The act of bringing pieces of information together to form new meaning is an act of creation. We can produce unique communications, plans, proposed sets of operations, sets of abstract relations, and more.

Example: "Convert an 'unhealthy' recipe for apple pie to a 'healthy' recipe by replacing your choice of ingredients. Argue for the health benefits of using the ingredients you chose versus the original ones."

Original Version

The original objectives were slightly different:

1. Knowledge (-> Remember)
2. Comprehension (-> Understand)
3. Application (-> Apply)
4. Analysis (-> Analyze)
5. Synthesis (-> Create and moved after Evaluate)
6. Evaluation (-> Evaluate)

An interesting anecdote that resonates with me and my approach

All knowledge is built on prior knowledge, so I shouldn't worry about feeling like I'm only creating a collection of other people ideas. I can apply bloom's taxonomy to these ideas you've collected:

• Is this idea worth memorizing? (Remember)
• How does this idea connect to others? (Understand)
  • Bottom Up Connections
  • Top Down Connections
• How can you apply this idea? (Apply)
• What are the subcomponents of this idea? (Analyze)
• How much solid evidence does this idea have? (Evaluate)

And lastly, the end point of a zettelkasten is output (e.g. to create). So create something using this idea.

To me the distinction between succumbing to the collector's fallacy and just being generously open to my future needs for information and ideas is this:

I do my best to take quick notes while reading, putting them into my own words before adding these ideas to my slip box and expanding on them.

There's another sentiment that lingers though, which is something like this: "given that I want to avoid the collector's fallacy, is the only evidence of my success that I have some product to show? And if so, what is the nature of that 'product'?"

Personally, I do my best to "think in public", blogging, writing in other venues; but even if it leads me to have more thoughtful conversations or even more skeptical analyses that I keep to myself, the system is a success.