Having moved to a school whose focus is on gifted education, I have been spending time learning as much as I can about the definition of giftedness. I have been doing so by participating in twitter chats, journal reading, and absorbing other readings about the topic.

I am especially excited to participate in an in-service workshop this upcoming Thursday with Dr. Joseph Renzulli. My new head of school, Ben Hebebrand wrote a summary of one of Dr. Renzulli’s more recent publications defining approaches to giftness within our 21st Century world, including the use of technology to expand, amplify, and become creators rather than simply consumers of information.

 

From Ben’s post, I am particularly attracted to the following statement

Fundamental to Dr. Renzulli’s conception of giftedness is a fine difference between what he terms “lesson learners” or “schoolhouse giftedness” (those who consume existing information) versus “creative producers” (those who go on to make important contributions to knowledge). Given the technology-enhanced abundance of existing information in this second decade of the 21^st Century, Renzulli argues that “in this day and age of exponential knowledge expansion, it would seem wise to consider a model that focuses on how our most able students access and make use of information rather than merely how they accumulate, store, and retrieve it.”

For those of you in the Chicago area, you may want to consider attending a conversation with Dr. Renzulli which will be held at Quest Academy on Thursday, September 27th. For more details, you can click on the following link – http://www.eventbrite.com/event/4131932722

I look forward sharing my reflections on the in-service that I will be attending with teachers not only from Quest Academy, but Avery Coonley and Da Vinci Academies as well.