How can technology help develop higher order thinking and problem solving skills?

Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of learning identifies six levels of thinking. They are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Often, education focuses on the first two or three levels while neglecting the last three. Analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are also known as higher order thinking skills (HOTS). Ideally students should be able to move beyond the first three levels of rote memorization, limited understanding, and robotic application to robust and self-directed ways of interacting with the material. HOTS, because it requires more inquiry and discovery on the part of the student, needs more tools at students' disposal to gather, process, and use information. Technology naturally provides such tools.

At every level of thinking, technology can be used. At the knowledge level, search engines can be used to mine the Internet for data relevant to a particular question or problem. At the comprehension level, blogs can be used to summarize, communicate, and critique understanding of a subject. At the application level, online surveys can be used to see if real-world data correlates to textbook knowledge. At the analysis level, patterns can be identified by using word-count tools such as Wordle. At the synthesis level, students can explore and test patterns to see if there is indeed a significant correlation using Google spreadsheets. At the evaluation level, students can use Slideshare to communicate their results and discuss whether they think correlation amounts to causation.


References
http://caret.iste.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=evidence&answerID=7
http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/techtorial/techtorial011.shtml
http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic69.htm