Year 9. Same forty-minute history lesson, two different versions. In version one, students type a 600-word source analysis arguing whether William's consolidation strategy was just. In version two, they record a 60-second piece-to-camera arguing the same thing. Both versions sit at Evaluate on Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. They land in different cells on the PICRAT grid. The frameworks are measuring different things.
That is the working line for thinking about the two together. Bloom's names the cognitive level the activity asks for. PICRAT names the work the technology is doing. Stack the two readings and you get a clearer picture of the lesson than either gives alone.
What Bloom's Digital Taxonomy adds
Bloom's original 1956 taxonomy ranked cognitive complexity from Knowledge at the bottom to Evaluation at the top. Anderson and Krathwohl's 2001 revision flipped the top two and renamed Synthesis as Create, giving us the six levels we recognise today: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate, Create.
In 2008, Andrew Churches published the Digital Taxonomy update. The six levels stayed. What changed was the verbs. Remember now includes bookmarking, retrieving and listing in a digital tool. Apply includes running a simulation or executing a piece of code. Analyse includes mind-mapping and tagging. Create includes producing a video, designing a podcast, or programming.
It is a useful frame. The six levels name cognitive complexity in a way most teachers can read at a glance, and the digital verbs gave the framework a second life when classrooms started using more software.
The two frameworks measure different things
The complication is that Bloom's says nothing about whether the technology in a lesson is doing real work. A student can write at Evaluate on paper. A student can write at Evaluate in a Google Doc that replicates exactly what paper would have done. Bloom's gives both lessons the same reading. PICRAT differentiates them.
Take the Year 9 history pair from the opening. Both versions sit at Evaluate, because in both versions students are weighing evidence and forming a judgement.
The typed essay is Passive Replace. Students read sources and type. The iPad does the same work paper would have done. Apart from spell-check, the technology is invisible to the lesson.
The recorded piece-to-camera is Creative Transform. Students make something the lesson could not produce in any other medium in the time available. The recording, watched by the class and judged, is what the technology brings to the lesson. Take the recording out and the lesson becomes something else.
Same Bloom's level. Different PICRAT placement. Same teacher, same students, same forty minutes.
The reading is more interesting than either framework alone gives. Bloom's confirms that both versions reach the cognitive level the unit needs. PICRAT tells the teacher whether the iPad earned its place. Stacking the two readings is how a department can defend a lesson choice that would look identical on a Bloom's audit and very different in practice.
The shared trap
Both frameworks have a visual gradient that pulls the eye towards the top.
Bloom's is drawn as a pyramid because that is how Anderson and Krathwohl's revision is most often illustrated. The shape implies a climb: Remember sits underneath Create the way a foundation sits underneath a roof. The implication every trainee teacher absorbs is that Create is the goal and Remember is the start.
PICRAT has the same problem in 3x3 form. The grid's colour gradient runs from pale at PR to saturated at CT. The eye goes to the top right. The implication is that Creative Transform is where good lessons live and Passive Replace is where weak ones do.
Both implications are wrong, in the same way and for the same reason. Cognitive level and technology placement should both follow the lesson. A vocabulary recap on a Tuesday afternoon belongs at Remember on Bloom's and PR on PICRAT. That placement is correct for that lesson. A unit-anchor lesson on whether William's consolidation was just belongs at Evaluate on Bloom's and CT on PICRAT, when the cost of the recording is repaid by the historical interpretation. That placement is also correct.
The argument in The Transformative trap applies to both frameworks. Treating the top of the pyramid or the top right of the grid as the destination produces lessons that strain to be ambitious about the wrong things.
How to use them together
The straightforward way is to plan the lesson, place it on both, and read the two placements side by side.
Three rules of thumb help.
Most lessons settle at Apply or Analyse on Bloom's and at IA or PA on PICRAT. That is the workhorse zone for both frameworks. Lessons here are coherent: the cognitive level is appropriate, the technology is doing real work, the teacher can defend both choices in two sentences.
When the placements line up, the lesson is internally consistent. Remember at PR is honest. Create at CT is honest, when the substance carries the cost. Evaluate at IA is the most-shipped lesson in a well-running department.
When the placements disagree, the disagreement is the discussion. Evaluate at PR (the typed essay) is fine if the cognitive grain is the prize and the iPad is incidental. Create at PR (a child illustrates a story on iPad in a way paper would have done identically) is fine if the time matters more than the medium. The two frameworks together flag the question; the teacher answers it.
Where they disagree, and why that's useful
Bloom's says the typed essay and the recorded video are equivalent. PICRAT says they are different lessons. Both readings are true at the level each framework measures.
The planning conversation that follows is the productive one. If the cognitive grain matters and the timetable is tight, the typed essay is the better lesson. It is faster, easier to mark, and the outputs are comparable. If the audience for the argument matters, and the act of speaking the judgement on camera is what fixes the learning, the video is the better lesson, and the iPad has earned its place.
Without both frameworks, the conversation defaults to one or the other. A Bloom's-only audit calls both lessons equally good and misses the technology question. A PICRAT-only audit prefers the video and misses the cognitive equivalence. The two together give the department the language to choose deliberately.
This is the same argument the comparison cluster has been making about SAMR and LoTi. Each framework names something the others do not. Where SAMR and LoTi translate cleanly into PICRAT, Bloom's stacks beside it. The two pictures are independent, and the lesson is described better when you read both.
Bloom's measures the thinking. PICRAT measures the technology. Use both.
What to do tomorrow
Take a lesson you have planned this week. Place it on Bloom's. Place it on PICRAT. Read the two placements together.
If they are coherent, ship the lesson.
If they disagree, ask whether the technology is doing the work the cognitive level needs. Often the answer is small: the same iPad activity with one different teacher prompt slides the lesson up the PICRAT row without changing its Bloom's level. Sometimes the answer is honest, and the lesson works without the technology and the iPad can leave the room.
If you want a faster start, open Generate. Pick a subject and an age range. Generate produces a 3x3 of nine activity ideas with their PICRAT placements. Read each one through Bloom's: the Apply ideas almost always sit at IA, the Create ideas split between PR (a tidy poster on iPad) and CT (a recorded explanation). The cell that lines up with the cognitive grain you want is the one to teach.
Andy Perryer is the head of digital learning at a group of international schools and the creator of PICRAT Suite. The PICRAT framework was developed by Royce Kimmons, Charles Graham and Richard West in their 2020 paper in the CITE Journal. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy is Andrew Churches' 2008 update of Anderson and Krathwohl's 2001 revision of the original 1956 taxonomy.