JULY 1^st

A COMPUTERIZED STRENGTH ASSESSMENT AND INTERNET BASED ENRICHMENT PROGRAM FOR DEVELOPING GIFTEDNESS AND TALENTS

Joseph S. Renzulli and Sally M. Reis

The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented

The University of Connecticut

Abstract

via teleconference

Remarkable advances in instructional communication technology (ICT) have now made it possible to provide high levels of enrichment services to students who have access to a computer and the Internet. This presentation will describe an Internet based enrichment program that is built upon a high-end learning theory and that focuses on the development of creative productivity through the application of knowledge rather than the mere acquisition and storage of information. The program, called the Renzulli Learning System (RLS), goes beyond the popular “worksheets-on-line” or courses on line that, by and large, have been early applications of ICT in most school situations. These early applications have been based on the same pedagogy that is regularly practiced in most traditional teaching situations, thereby minimizing the role of the Internet to a gigantic encyclopedia rather than a source of information for first-hand investigative and creative endeavors.

The Renzulli Learning System is a comprehensive program that begins by providing a computer-generated profile of each student’s academic strengths, interests, learning styles, and preferred modes of expression. A search engine then matches Internet resources to the student’s profile from fourteen carefully screened data-bases that are categorized by subject area, grade level, state curricular standards, and degree of complexity.  A management system called the Wizard Project Maker guides students in the application of knowledge to teacher selected assignments, independent research studies, or creative projects that individuals or small groups would like to pursue.   Students and teachers can evaluate the quality of students’ products using a rubric called The Student Product Assessment Form. Students can rate each site visited, conduct a self-assessment of what they have gained from the site, and place resources in their own Total Talent Portfolio for future use.

Teacher functions allow downloading of hundreds of reproducible creativity and critical thinking activities as well as numerous off-line resources for lesson planning and curricular integration. Management functions allow teachers to group students by interests and learning styles, place teacher-selected resources in student portfolios for classroom or special project use, and oversee all student activity including where and when the students have been on-line using the RLS. The system can be used at home and during the summer, and parents can view their own son’s or daughter’s work on the system. The principal or designated project manager can also examine all activity taking place in a given building or program.

Dr. Joseph S. Renzulli, is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, where he also serves as director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. His research has focused on the identification and development of creativity and giftedness in young people, and on organizational models and curricular strategies for differentiated learning environments that contribute to total school improvement. A focus of his work has been on applying the pedagogy of gifted education to the improvement of learning for all students.

His most recent books include the second edition of The Schoolwide Enrichment Model, The Multiple Menu Model for Developing Differentiated Curriculum, The Parallel Curriculum Model, and the second edition of Enriching Curriculum for All Students. His 1978 article entitled called What Makes Giftedness has been cited as the most frequently referenced article in the field. Dr. Renzulli is the author of more than 380 articles in professional journals, books, chapters in books, and numerous technical reports.  He has been awarded more than $35 million in research grants, $1.3 million in personnel training grants, and $3.7 million in grants and endowments to support direct service programs for students and teachers.

Dr. Renzulli is Fellow in the American Psychological Association, a former president of the Association for the Gifted, and he has served on the editorial boards of Learning Magazine, the Journal of Law and Education, Exceptionality, and most of the national and international journals dealing with gifted education. He was a consultant to the White House Task Force on Education of the Gifted and Talented, has worked with numerous schools and ministries of education throughout the U. S. and abroad. His work has been translated into several languages and is widely used around the world.  His most recent work is a computer-based assessment of student strengths integrated with an Internet based search engine that matches enrichment activities and resources with individual student profiles [www.renzullilearning.com].

Dr. Renzulli was designated a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut in 2000, and in 2003 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. In 2009 Dr. Renzulli was designated a Fellow in the American Educational Research Association. The American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology named Dr. Renzulli among the 25 most influential psychologists in the world. He lists as his proudest professional accomplishment being the founder of the summer Confratute program at UConn, which began in 1978, and has served approximately twenty-five thousand teachers and administrators from around the world.

> CURRICULUM VITAE: Joseph S. Renzulli

Sally M. Reis, is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut where she also serves as Principal Investigator of The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented.  She was a teacher for 15 years, 11 of which were spent working with gifted students on the elementary, junior high, and high school levels.  She has authored more than 100 articles, eight books, 30 book chapters, and numerous monographs and technical reports.  She has traveled extensively across the country conducting workshops and providing professional development for school districts on enrichment programs and gender equity programs.  She is co-author of The Schoolwide Enrichment Model, The Secondary Triad Model, Dilemmas in Talent Development in the Middle Years, and a new book published in 1998 about talent development in females entitled Work Left Undone: Choices and Compromises of Talented Females.  Sally serves on the editorial board of the Gifted Child Quarterly, and is a past-president of The National Association for Gifted Children.

JULY 2^nd

THE GIFTED BRAIN: TEACHING THE WAY THE BRAIN LEARNS

Barbara Clark, Ed.D.

Professor Emeritas, California State University, Los Angeles, USA.

Abstract

Satellite appearance

During this session an overview of what is currently known about the brain related to learning and teaching will be presented. How appropriate stimulation creates change in the structure and function of the brain that results in the development of giftedness will be reviewed. A teaching and learning model will be demonstrated that includes strategies for using the brain research to optimize learning. The model includes development of a responsive learning environment, and the creation and integration of challenging cognitive, affective, physical, and intuitive experiences. Integrating brain functioning into the teaching process is exciting and very powerful for all learners; it is essential for gifted learners.

Dr. Barbara Clark is a Professor Emeritus in the Charter College of Education at California State University, Los Angeles. She was named California State University, Los Angeles Outstanding Professor of 1978-1979 and nominated for California State Universities and Colleges Trustees Award for Outstanding Professor twice. Dr. Clark is a Past President of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children, the National Association for Gifted Children, and of the California Association for the Gifted. Among the awards Dr. Clark has received are the National Association for the Gifted Distinguished Service Award in 1997, and the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children, International Distinguished Service Award in 2003. Dr. Clark is the author of the widely used text, Growing Up Gifted, now in its seventh edition (2008), published by Merrill/Prentice-Hall/Pearson, and has published many chapters and articles in a variety of professional books and journals. Dr. Clark has served as editor of World Gifted, and Associate Editor for several journals including The Gifted Child Quarterly, The Gifted Education Communicator, and Gifted and Talented International. Dr. Clark has presented major addresses and workshops throughout the United States, and numerous countries around the world. Her current interests are in the improvement of gifted education, using brain research to optimize learning, and the further development of Integrative Education, a model for optimizing learning that is based on teaching the way the brain learns.

JUST DO IT! HOW TO PRACTICE AND WHAT THAT DOES TO THE BRAIN

Peter Vuust

Professor, Royal Academy of Music & Lecturer at
 Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.

Abstract

Music is experienced, performed and shared by people in all societies, ages
 and social groups. Even though music is not a branch of sport as such, the
 skills that musicians achieve are in many ways comparable to the skills of
 athletes, especially at the level of the motor system. Recently,
neuroscientific interest in music has increased dramatically as modern brain
imaging techniques have provided researchers the means to investigate the
 living human brain at work. An important feature of music as compared to
 other areas of human cognition is that it divides the population into
 different levels of expertise: from people with no musical training at all
 to expert musicians uniting complicated motor, auditory and emotional skills
 into coherent, meaningful musical expressions. This makes music and the
 study of musicians versus non-musicians an ideal subject for researchers who
are interested in studying the learning mechanisms of the brain.

The present presentation focuses on how to practise and the differences in
 brain structure and responses between musicians and non-musicians resulting
 from years of intense musical training. It also gives an introduction to the
 exiting new brain imaging techniques that have been developed over the last
 couple of decades, making it possible not only to get detailed images of the
 brain but also to monitor neural activity in the brain at work.

Peter Vuust is full professor at the Royal Academy of music and lecturer at
 the Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University Hospital.
PhD. from the medical department of Aarhus University, M. Sc. in
mathematics, French and music. Author of the Book: “Polyrhythm and –meter in
 modern jazz; a study of Miles Davis’ Quintet from the 1960s”. Publishes in
 international, peer reviewed journals. Jazz bassist and composer. 5 CDs as a 
leader of Peter Vuust Quartet with Alex Riel, Lars Jansson and Ove 
Ingemarsson. Participates on more than 80 CDs as sideman.

*The work of Peter Vuust:* Lately, neuroscientific interest in music has 
increased dramatically as modern brain imaging techniques have provided
 researchers the means to investigate the living human brain at work. Based
 on his music theoretical book on Miles Davis Quintet in the 1960s (Vuust,
2000), claming that jazz musicians use musical polyrhythms as a language,
Peter Vuust has been first to investigate neural processing of polyrhythms
 in jazz musicians. Using agnetoencephalography, electroencephalography and
 functional MR imaging, Peter Vuust recently provided evidence of an overlap
between the neural substrates underlying processing of music and language
syntax (Leino et al., 2007) and semantics (Vuust et al., 2006, fMRI) 
especially in musicians (Vuust et al., 2005). This has lead to research into
 the emotional impact of music (Vuust and Frith, 2008;Vuust and Kringelbach,
2008;Kringelbach et al., 2008;Green et al., 2008), studies of
 neuroplasticity in musicians (Chakravarty and Vuust, 2008), and research
 into general theories about brain organization (Vuust et al., 2008). Since 
2007, Vuust leads his own group with six phd students and a number of
 masters students, investigating research questions of both musical,
neuroscientific and clinical relevance. Vuust collaborates with
 internationally renowned top researchers such as Chris Frith, Risto Nδδtδnen,
 Mari Tervianemi and Lauren Stewart.

JULY 3^rd

MATHEMATICS IS PAINTING WITHOUT THE BRUSH; PAINTING IS MATHEMATICS WITHOUT THE CHALK.

Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen

Professor of Mathematical Physics, Department of Mathematics and Institute for Mathematical Sciences,

Complexity and Networks programme: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/mathsinstitute

Imperial College London, South Kensington campus, London, UK.

Abstract

Although at a superficial level mathematics and painting may be perceived as of very different nature, they are profoundly similar at a deep conceptual and functional level. The similarity goes far beyond the straightforward relation one immediately may notice by the fact that geometry plays a significant role in both disciplines. The significant kinship between math and painting become evident, when one considers that both disciplines are concerned with a symbolic description of the world surrounding us in all its aspects. Both painting and mathematics struggles to express by abstraction the general behind the specific and establish the essential and relevant. Both disciplines try to digest and analyse notions such as open versus closed, or figurative versus non-figurative, or finite versus infinite. Both activities make use of contradictions and explorations. It is important, not least for the teaching of mathematics, to realise that this is fundamentally a discipline that is profoundly similar to the arts and humanities and in particular to painting. Mathematics will then not be considered a unique and or alien discipline but can be approached with playfulness and experimentation along the traditions used in the teaching of art, where rigor and exploration goes hand in hand.

Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen is a Professor of Mathematical Physics in the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London. He leads the research programme in Complexity and Networks in the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at Imperial. His research on Complex systems revolves around how statistical mechanics can describe and explain emergent phenomena. His research activities include long time macroevolution, EEG signatures of musical creativity and complexity measures of the strongly correlated activity spanning the brain as extracted from fMRI data.

He has a long time interest in the relation between mathematics and scientific enquiry on one side and the deliberation of the arts and philosophy on the other.

His home page is at www.ma.ic.ac.uk/~hjjens , where more detail concerning publications and research projects can be found.

JULY 4^th

EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND PRACTICE REGARDING GIFTED AND TALENTED STUDENTS (G&T)

Maria Dolores Prieto Sanchez,

Professor, Faculty of Education, Director of the High Abilities Research Group, University of Murcia, Spain

Abstract

The aim of this work is to explain Spanish Gifted and Talented (G&T) policy and how it is being developed in our Region (Region of Murcia, South East of Spain). According to our law regarding G&T, schools and counsellors have the responsibility for 1) the development of effective and equitable identification procedures and 2) the development of appropriate programmes to foster their learning outcomes. Firstly, we explain our gifted and talented educational policy in Spain. Secondly, we analyze the key points related to gifted and talented educational policy in the Region of Murcia (South East of Spain). Thirdly, we explain and design the different steps of our identification model and the different areas included in the assessment: perception of parents, teachers and pupils of the child’s special talents; intellectual abilities; creativity; emotional intelligence; personality traits; school, family and social context. Fourthly, we define the educational provision for G&T used in the Region of Murcia (curricula, extracurricular tasks and enrichment workshops). Regarding the educational provision for G&T pupils, teachers use enrichment programmes, materials or activities according to the interest, motivation and preferences of G&T pupils. We would like to highlight that we designed different extra curricular workshops to work in cooperative groups with G&T pupils coming from different schools in Murcia (for example, funny mathematics, divergent thinking, solving socio-emotional problems and research projects). Finally, we draw (arrive at) some conclusions in which we outline the advantages of the enrichment programmes.

CURRICULUM VITAE: María Dolores Prieto Sánchez.

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