Published on October 2, 2011 by Lisa Rivero in Creative Synthesis
The question may seem odd if you assume that personality is something we are born with or that we develop but cannot greatly change. We talk about whether people “have personality” (as if some people have none) or whether someone has a pleasing personality. However, according to Kazimierz Dabrowski, personality can–and should–be consciously created and developed… Read More
When I first learned about the Bavarian Center for Gifted and Talented Children’s project for a virtual online world for gifted children, I was fascinated by this creative use of technology on an international scale. I’ve asked Roya Klingner, Head of the Center, to explain the amazing World of Begabungs.
begabung: talent, gift
by Roya Klingner
We began the pilot project in July of 2011 with 10 kids from Germany, USA, Ireland, and Denmark as a virtual summer camp.
After that successful project, on November 1st, 2011, we are going to start the first virtual world for gifted kids around the world.
In the virtual world “The World of Begabungs,” we will give gifted children between the ages of 12 and 16 from all over the world the possibility to work on projects in a secure internet environment. The world is based on OpenSim, an opensource version of SecondLife™, and access is restricted to the participants and the mentors, so the children can work and interact in secure surroundings. In addition to the children’s own projects, they can participate in classes about different topics, for example, scripting, graphical design, three-dimensional building, and more. The projects and classes are tailored to the children’s interests. Playful project-oriented learning with fun, mentoring, enrichment, and meeting children from other cultures are the goals of the project. Since this is an international project, the main language will be English.
In addition to the adult mentors from the Bavarian Center for Gifted and Talented Children, some of the participants from our virtual summer camp will be available as mentors in the World of Begabungs and the forum. Gifted kids mentor gifted kids.
The monthly fee of 20 Euro (approximately $27.23 US) per child covers all classes and personal mentoring at specific times. It also includes access to the virtual world and use of the web forums.
The World of Begabungs is a project of the Bavarian Center for Gifted and Talented Children (Begabungszentrum Bayern GbR).
The World of Begabungs on Facebook
About the World of Begabungs:
What the members of the world of Begabungs build during summer camp:
New York Times Opinion Piece on Acceleration and Red-ShirtingThe authors of Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows From Conception to College offer a refreshing perspective on the value for some children of starting school early:
“Acceleration is a powerful intervention, with effects on achievement that are twice as large as programs for the gifted. Grade-skippers even report more positive social and emotional feelings.” Read More
Milwaukee writer and education activist Terry Falk writes about the need to reform gifted and talented programming to include and meet the needs of twice-exceptional learners. Thank you to Parenting for High Potential for the link.
“Many gifted and talented education experts believe that such gifted students have a higher percentage with exceptional educational needs than the general population. Whole organizations and websites are now devoted to ‘twice exceptional’ or ’2e’ children.
Unfortunately, those are not the students that are often placed into gifted and talented programs. Instead, these programs are filled with ‘well-schooled’ children who get high grades, do all their homework, and follow instructions of their teachers. Their parents push them along, support them with tutors, piano and dance lessons. These children may be bright and hardworking, but they do not meet the classic definition of gifted and talented.” ~Read More
I have greatly enjoyed following Susan Cain’s blog, QUIET: The Power of Introverts. Her recent post featuring public speaking tips from Gina Barnett (who coaches TED speakers) is a definite keeper and one I am going to share with my engineering students:
“[T]his is not about training yourself away from your true self. It’s about letting your true self speak. It’s about seeing your voice as an instrument – your own personal, idiosyncratic instrument – and learning to play it right. It’s an empowering viewpoint. Working with Gina, I feel like a promising musician training to be a maestro. An introverted maestro!.” Read More
You might also enjoy “Malcolm Gladwell: Speaking as an Introvert.”
“A world where we don’t listen to each other at all, is a very scary place indeed.”
~ Julian Treasure
One of the best pieces about homeschooling I’ve read in a long time is Penelope Trunk’s “Generation Z Will Revolutionize Education.” Our son is now 20 and homeschooled for ten years, from the end of second grade until he entered college full-time. He was born on the cusp of Generation Z (as I was born between the cracks of the Baby Boomers and Generation X) , and our homeschooling experience echoes and bears out many of Ms. Trunk’s observations and predictions. She writes:
“[W]e will have a generation of kids who grew up with largely a self-learning, self-directed model. They are more accustomed to figuring out what they like to do, and doing it on their own. The crisis to figure out what to do with one’s life will not last so long because Gen X will raise more independent and self-directed kids.’
I see this self-direction not only in our son but in his friends. It’s not that they don’t worry about the future or struggle to choose a career, but most of them definitely do not experience the decision as a crisis. They have the confidence that they will figure it all out… eventually.
“[A]s qualifications for the workplace will rapidly change and older people who don’t keep up will be outdated, it will be Generation Z that is best at keeping up. Not because they are young, but because they understand that unschooling is not a movement for kids, but a way to live a life, and it doesn’t stop when you start getting a paycheck.”
The unschooling that was a large part of our homeschooling years returned to me a passion for learning and gave our son an invaluable perspective on education, so that, even in college, he can give himself permission to learn what and when and how he wants to learn, regardless of whether he receives credit or grades, whether school is in session or out.
Homeschooling is not the only way to give children this sense of freedom and initiative (and generalities about generations can easily become too sweeping), but I do think that the readily available and increasingly acceptable option of homeschooling—even for families who choose never to leave the traditional classroom—offers a new and empowering perspective on learning, one that James T. Webb presented in his keynote address to the 2011 SENG Conference when he posed this question: Are we preparing gifted children for college… or preparing them for life?
What trends or changes do you see in attitudes toward education and learning in yourselves, your children, or your students?
“Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Think of the last time you were fully engaged with your writing or other creative work. You were working to meet the challenge at hand, but you didn’t feel as though you were working. Rather, you were playing intensely. Your skills were perfectly matched to what was expected from you. Perhaps most important, you were completely engaged with the activity of writing so that you were free from the usual weight of self-consciousness.
Psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced MEE-hy CHEEK-sent-meh-HY-ee) calls this experience one of flow, a state of “optimal experience.” One of the most important aspects of Csikszentmihalyi’s theory is that flow occurs only when we give what we are doing our undivided attention. From his Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention:
“Many of the peculiarities attributed to creative persons are really ways to protect the focus of concentration so that they may lose themselves in the creative process. Distractions interrupt flow, and it may take hours to recover the peace of mind one needs to get on with the work. The more ambitious the task, the longer it takes to lose oneself in it, and the easier it is to get distracted.”
Flow can happen in a wide variety of areas and activities. Runners experience flow when they are pushing the limits of their endurance and training and suddenly lose track of time and space, aware only of their muscles working together and moving in concert. Chess players experience flow when their skills and study allow them to see the upcoming moves play out in their head, when they are guided by their own internal grandmaster. We can even experience flow in friendship, when our work and time invested in knowing and relating to another person pay off in an ever growing, mutually satisfying relationship in which we lose ourselves temporarily by sharing who we are with another.
Flow doesn’t just happen because we want it to. Flow occurs when we are involved in some endeavor outside of ourselves that we have some skills for. A child learning to play the piano, for example, has little chance of experiencing flow while learning to read notes or how to place his hands on the keyboard. However, with enough practice, his skills increase to the point at which he can play a song; then he has the chance to lose himself in the music that he has learned to make. When that music becomes too easy to produce flow, he continues to learn and practice so that more difficult challenges are met with ever-improving skills. That’s how flow works. As we get better, we enjoy ourselves more.
Csikszentmihalyi argues that adding more moments of flow to our lives not only helps us to be more creative and successful, but, more important, it makes us happier and improves the quality of our lives. The happiness of flow is not the fleeting pleasure of a favorite meal or hot shower. It’s the accumulation of moments of “optimal experience” that help us feel at one with the world. We have both greater self-knowledge and less self-consciousness. We also gain the long-term joy of personal accomplishment.
How To Be Happy at Work:
Use the following flow chart (!) to think about the role of flow in your daily life:
Are you bored by your writing or other work? You might need to increase the challenge you set for yourself, perhaps by giving yourself firmer deadlines or taking a greater risk or tackling a more difficult project. Does your writing make you anxious? You might consider either reducing the challenge or, even better, improving your skills by taking a class or joining a writing group or doing sustained exercises in a good writing handbook. Do you want to use your writing to relax, or to become energized? Tailor the level of challenge of your activity accordingly.
Note: Parts of this post, originally published at Writing Life on March 24, 2011, are excerpted and adapted from A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Teens: Living with Intense and Creative Adolescents (Great Potential Press, 2010).
This recent comment has stayed with me (check out the blogger’s fun “about” page and her post on making changes when we’re older):
“[I]t’s very useful to be reminded it actually takes very little effort to begin a writing exercise. And that it doesn’t have to be any good.”
That last part is so important to remember: Often we never begin––whether it’s big or small, writing or some other project––because of the mistaken idea that we need to get it perfect the first time. One of the best discussions on this topic comes from Anne Lamott in her must-read book on writing, Bird by Bird:
On Shitty First Drafts: “All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much.” Read More
So, when you sit down today to write, remember that if you feel unsure of yourself and your talent, discouraged by the naysayers (whether out there or in your head), and terrified of not getting it right, know that all writers feel the same way. Your job is simply to write, imperfectly at first, maybe even incompetently at times. You can fix it later.
I see this issue time and time again in my college classes. Often even very talented students don’t give themselves a chance of doing their best work because they think their first draft has to be good. So they put off writing their essays and reports until their only choice is to hand in their first draft as a final draft because they’ve left themselves no time for revision.
For even more inspiration on messy beginnings and the value of planning, see J. K. Rowling’s revision of the plan of Order of the Phoenix, and be sure to look at the screenshot image of Rowling’s chart and changes.
First published at Writing Life on February 23, 2011.
I’m currently traveling (London!) and have decided over the next few days to share here some of the most-read posts from my author blog (especially those with cross-over themes) and vice versa.
(first published at Writing Life, February 16, 2011)
“I wasted time by reading emails whenever they came into my inbox. I noticed that once I had started reading the name of the sender, I read the first line of the text. Once I mastered that, I continued reading the entire message, and once I got to that point, I felt compelled to respond because there was no point in leaving an already half-finished task. Then sometimes I needed extra information to answer the message, so had to add other tasks… [I] often wasn’t making any progress with what I was originally working on – and in the end felt quite breathless and exhausted. I thought I couldn’t be the only person struggling with this.” ~ Ulrich Weger, quoted by Lucy Tobin
The recent Guardian article “How To Beat Technology Addiction,” by Lucy Tobin, is one I nearly missed. I don’t really think of myself as addicted to technology. I don’t have a smart phone or a texting plan or even, for that matter, a microwave oven or an automatic dishwasher.
After reading the article (a reading which, by the way, was punctuated by a trip to the kitchen to toast a bagel, a search on my bookshelf for a couple of books that recently came to mind, and a Google search for “Writer, Interrupted,” to make sure the title hasn’t been overused, which led to some interesting blogs by writers), I realized that its message about the interrupted life is as important as technology addiction.
For me, technology has fed what seems to be my innate tendency to follow the next new thought. Sometimes this is a good thing. More and more often recently, I find that it’s not. Over the past few months I’ve been slowly trying to retrain myself to pay sustained attention to my reading and writing, often offline (or at least with only one tab open), trying to learn new habits and unlearn old ones.
It’s not easy, but I can definitely say I am making progress. My experiment last fall with writing for an hour before going online showed me how important my early morning hours are, and in the end led to my doing longhand morning pages for 20 minutes before checking email, just as a way to set the tone for the day. I continue to work on giving myself time limits and specific “appointments” during the day for checking and answering email. I’m more successful some days than others, but, like psychologist and researcher Ulrich Weger, quoted above, I’m definitely more “breathless and exhausted” on interrupted days.
In the end, that’s what matters: How I want to feel. If more productivity is a byproduct, that’s great, but my main goal is to feel calmer, more whole, and less scattered.
Weger offers hope for the chronically interrupted with a simple exercise:
“As soon as you notice that you have diverted to another thought, pull yourself away from the intrusive thought and turn back to the image straight away. After practice, you get more competent at shielding yourself against the countless tempting stimuli in our world of information overload.”
What works for you? Let’s pool our ideas. (Note: If you are interested, hop on over to the original post to read several readers’ comments and suggestions.)
Thank you very much to Deborah Mersino for the kind mention of this blog in her Spotlight on Resources for Gifted Learners!
On 09.02.11, our #gtchat session focused on five resources and sites resplendent with information and opportunities for educators, parents, and gifted education advocates. As promised, I am recapping the resources here. Please share these five finds with classroom educators, gifted specialists, administrators, friends, parents, students, and tech lovers. The links are live, so simply scroll over them to access. Read More
Wenda Sheard (emeritus board member and past president of SENG and seventh-grade teacher at The American School in England) has a brand new blog that “will focus on diverse topics related to critical thinking, curricular differentiation, educational technology, cognitive neuroscience, dyslexia, vocabulary acquisition, and universal design.” From her first post:
“My goal in teaching zeugmas and polysyndetons is to teach students to think well—to think about writing and grammar in ways I was never encouraged to think of them when I was a student. (Break rules? Heavens, no!) I want my students to feel free to blaze their own paths as writers, ever cognizant that writing is an exchange between writer and reader. I want my students to learn to analyze how authors create special effects in the minds of their readers. I want my students to learn to tickle minds, to touch hearts.” Read More
The blog Laughing at Chaos is one woman’s candid, smart, and often hilarious take on raising gifted children. Jen writes, “I ramble on giftedness and twice-exceptionalities; on the eternal quest for life balance; on raising boys; on the uber-silliness that is life, the universe, and everything. My goals are to find the silver lining, to laugh to keep from screaming, to share the stories of my crazy life so that others know.”
Be sure not to miss her post from yesterday, “Giving Up Normal“:
“I try hard, so hard, to believe that ‘normal is just a setting on the washing machine.’ (Huh. Just looked. Even my washing machine isn’t normal; that word is nowhere to be found on the machine.) My whole life I’ve tried to be normal, with varying degrees of success. I’m married, I have two kids, I have a dog, I have a minivan, I have a mortgage…all normal. Except. Little around here is normal. Poke around this site long enough and you’ll certainly find that…” Read More
