Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education Any interest in a gifted education wiki?

Like the subject says. If you think one would be useful, do you think it's best to use a site like wikia.com or just register a completely new domain? If so, what domain?

I looked and didn't find an existing one, but I might have missed it. If so, please let me know.

Hoagies?
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/

It's a great site, but it's not a wiki. It's not user-editable, for one thing. It's a great hub and also to some extent an authority, for sure, just as this site is.

There are sites for educators to share lesson plans and worksheets, but the ones I've seen are not perfectly structured, and a great many are also pay sites. The wiki I'm thinking of could to some degree point to or contain content already existing at sites like this one and Hoagies, but could also have lots of other content too (like actual sample resources) and would be free and user-editable.

I would probably get it up and running and dump some content in, and then of course it would be up to the users. If it's not a great idea, I'm okay with that. But I don't see anything like that on the web right now.

I see a fair amount of user-created content shoehorned into discussion boards; I've shoehorned some of it myself. That's not a perfect solution because even if all of the good content-containing threads got stickied (certainly a rosy outcome), they would still be forced into the structure of stickied threads in a forum. In addition, even in a stickied thread here and elsewhere, you typically can't edit the original post after a certain amount of time. Hence even if a librarian type revisits her original post to update it with all the valuable content in the thread, that ability is lost eventually. Also, nobody but the originator can edit the original post at all.

For these reasons discussion boards are not great for containing user-created content; they're good for discussing things. Every time someone here hunts up an old, valuable thread and links to it, or shares a link to something else of value, it's a hint to me that a wiki would be useful. Instead of those users saving links to things, they could essentially collaborate in saving their structure of valuable gifted information as they see it, plus dump in whatever content they wished. Discussions on the content would be separated out and not obscure the content, cross-links and updates would be added in passing by user-editors, etc.

I think it's a great idea, and I'd welcome your efforts!
Love and More Love,
Grinity

...Because the search here ain't so great even though it's interactive and the Hoagies is kind of limited to a few professionals on a subject. Lucounu you reinvented the wheel. Quit while you're ahead.
http://blogs.saschina.org/bknowles/files/2009/09/divide-by-zero.jpg
Let me know how I can help. I don't mind re-reading the threads here to itimize a list of recurring content, or googling how to spell itimize.

If you set up a wiki I would look at it and perhaps contribute, but I prefer the discussion board format, because each post has a specific author. Even if we use pseudonyms, our styles of posting and general philosophy become apparent fairly soon, and others can weigh what we write in that light.

I think it's a great idea.

All right then, I will do it. LaTex, I will let you know when it's ready for itimizations. Bostonian, I agree. It wouldn't be for discussions so much, but rather a content repository. I see a lot of value in discussions, but the wiki content would ideally be content-neutral.

Hi Iucounu - I know someone involved in the gifted education community who recently expressed interest in a similar idea. I'll contact him to see if he might be interested in collaborating.

Yeah, it's just like a cross-referenced dictionary defining everything, right?

Thanks! Feel free to pass along my contact info if you like. You can also mention, if it helps, that I have a background in software engineering, so setting up (and extending the software of) a wiki would be easy for me. I love to collaborate.

A lot of small entries certainly can seem that way. There's a project related to Wikipedia at wiktionary.org that is just that, a user-editable dictionary.

Sounds like a great idea I agree it is very easy for resources to get lost in discussion forums.

Totally love the idea!!

I think it's a great idea. Good one Lucounu

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

I like this wiki's intro. But we do need citations so far as we need reference material that we can use and look into, so, nevermind. Ok. Let's at least plagiarize the part that says we're not about bashing things or making snide remarks, except when they're Really. funny.

This is going to be fun.

Update: I'm in the process of evaluating where and how to host the wiki. This overview shows some things to consider:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Starting_and_Running_a_Wiki_Website

I've ruled out hosting the wiki at someplace like wikispaces.com, which are called "wiki farms" because they exist just to host lots of wikis. At these sites, to get some of the full-fledged permissions, custom domain name, etc. seems like it costs extra money while still not providing perfect flexibility, and I want us to have full control over the software and features we use. Besides, wiki farms from my quick review often don't offer very good export capabilities, which seems like it might become a problem if the wiki must be moved later. For example Wikispaces, which seems like the biggest and in some ways the best wiki farming option, allows export of hosted wiki content in only HTML and PDF formats, which I'm guessing would require re-entry of every page if the wiki were moved to another host later.

For these reasons I've tentatively settled on using MediaWiki (the software which powers Wikipedia), and buying generic web hosting from a provider like GoDaddy which includes PHP hosting and MySQL database support, which are needed to run MediaWiki. The whole bit could be picked up and plopped on a different web server capable of running the same software, and MediaWiki offers lots of robust and familiar features. But if Mark's contact turns out to want some other software, I'll be open to using that too. There are apparently over a hundred different types of wiki software to use.

La Texican, that tvtropes.org intro does have some good parts to it. I particularly like the emphasis on the lack of the "notability" aspect of Wikipedia, to stress to new people that it is much less restrictive. Our wiki will not be an encyclopedia, but more of a repository for people to share useful information, even if it's not easily verifiable in the way encyclopedic content must be.

Another important way in which I imagine it may differ is by containing useful content that people develop themselves, like home-schooling curricula. I also imagine different types of learning resources which people find useful will have their own pages, where I would want people to put in their own personal impressions; this would be more useful the lesser-known the resource. There are different sources of review and rating information on the web, with Amazon being a big example, but they are not focused on the needs of gifted people and it's hard to get an idea from them of how appropriate a particular resource would be for a gifted child. It's user-created information where I think the new wiki may tend to be most different (in type of content) from places like Hoagies and this site.

All that and plus a wiki asks the contributors to be more objective and generic because forums are for your stories and personal opinions. I think a wiki can hold reviews. I'll have to google that.

I don't know anything about hosting. I only know tripod.com or webs.com will host free pages, but you only get like ten pages which is not enough for a wiki.

Not really. A wiki, at its heart, is really just a user-editable website. It can hold anything you like. Wikipedia is just one particular use of a wiki.


That's right, and in addition the web hosting requirements for a wiki are higher because those free websites can only serve static (unchanging, mostly unprogrammable) pages. In selecting the hosting for this wiki, I also want to stay away from ads shown on the wiki pages.

lucounu -

I think the wiki is a great idea. I especially like your idea to allow people to comment on the resources. Keep up posted.

Thanks, and I will. I just registered "giftedwiki.org", and am looking into how to install MediaWiki on a Linux machine.

Okay, it's installed. It was a shockingly easy several-click installation (and partly for this reason, as well as very low cost and good portability, I recommend GoDaddy for anyone who wants to start a wiki, at least with MediaWiki or one of their other supported types of wiki software). I haven't begun creating pages or mucking with the settings yet, but will do that over the coming week so that it becomes an actual working wiki.

Now I have to think about setting up a starting structure, sort of a latticework on which the information will begin to take shape. I'm going to start by surveying the discussion boards here and thinking a bit. I'm completely open to suggestions and collaboration-- that's really the whole point.

Gifted Boredom

Some parents worry about their gifted son/daughter (not living up to their potential). �Some other parents are faced with (boredom created behavior) in class, which is different from (2e problems), or (lack of social awareness), or the problems related from frustration when your (agemates aren't your true peers).

Alternatively some parents deal with their kids �(Getting Crap Past the radar), which gets the others to think the parents to look for problems where there aren't any.

I wuz hoping someone would tell me if that would be a valid entry or not, or give a bettr example if I was way off.

One more idea: at the bottom of the page where they keep show buttons for the "history", "see also", "further reading links"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Could you make one of the show buttons for listing forum conversations about the subject? (from this forum or others, wherever it's been talked about.)

I think maybe you're viewing the mobile version of that page, but I understand.

That's a bright idea in my opinion, for use in certain situations. One might think that anyone can go to use Google to find their own further information, and from that perspective it might be important to discuss in the main topic enough related terms and information to enable them to do high-quality searches. In addition if a related idea is important enough, it should be fleshed out in the wiki at some point. But I really like the idea of pre-baked searches, combining multiple terms etc., for people to click on to find further info and spur their thinking about how to search further. They could even be useful for a later editor to check for new material with which to update the wiki. Similarly, it's common in legal research to save complex searches for reuse on databases like Westlaw, because new cases and journal articles appear daily and it avoids reinventing the wheel.

I'm assuming that each pair of parentheses is where you would consider placing a link, which is good thinking. I see strengths and weaknesses with the passage. Some of them have to do with terminology, e.g. "frustration when your agemates arent' your true peers" could perhaps be better worded to use the more standard term "asynchronous development", which I agree is probably important enough for its own page as you've identified. The more uses of a specific term like that, the more familiar the reader will quickly become with the lingo, and if we will have a page named "asynchronous development" then links to it would best be named the same as the page as much as possible.

I don't think the idea in the first sentence is fully expressed enough for an average reader, though I understand the idea, that boredom can be a symptom of lack of an appropriate challenge level, leading to worries about not living up to potential.

I don't fully get the last sentence, or the reference to that TV trope.

In general I think the passage, in context of just trying wiki-style writing on for size, is actually pretty good. These are just some quick, random thoughts. I think you'd be fine editing a wiki. Especially once some content is available as an example, people that care seem to quickly get the hang of what they're supposed to do. It's like any sort of editing; problems just start to stick out like sore thumbs, and your natural tendency is to correct them, either in previously written content or your own new stuff. People also have different strengths, and one person might notice an opportunity for improvement that someone else missed. The quality of the content is important, but you don't have to be perfect, especially for someone who's starting out, and especially for something like this. As long as people work on a wiki in good faith, it constantly improves.

This board seems to have become somewhat international, and a world wide wiki would be a wonderful tool too - if it's possible. No doubt there would be be things that would cross over regardless of location and also ideas that are used in different countries that might be taken up as a new idea by a reader in their own country. But it would also be useful if people could use it to update and access information specific to their own location too I think. No doubt something already considered and I have no idea if it is relevant to the set up of such a tool or not, but just thought I'd put it out there in case it was (I'd be happy to update it with links to Australian resources, if that would be useful).

Yippee!

Giftodd, we're on the same page. I am in the process of figuring out how to structure that info right now, and should have it ready by Monday.

Here's an example of "getting crap past the radar". �I posted in another thread yesterday that Wyatt's been messing around with his letters covertly. �He convinced my grandmother he was having a hard time telling �b, p, q, d apart. �I said, what?! �He's known his letters for over a year! �She said, well those are hard. �Then he started drawing u&n interchanged. �Then yesterday he did this http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/Hablame_today/bc7fc25d.jpg I laughed at him because he thought I didn't know what he was doing and when he couldn't immediately write the 2 backwards he wrote it forwards and made a baby voice and tried to convince me, 'is this how you draw a 2.' ? �And then today He figured out this morning 2 is a backwards s, he wrote on another paper in place of an s and said '2' outloud. �But look at this, he made a wiggle on the s in bats, then ran with in making a 3 instead of the s in houses.
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/Hablame_today/064ce8f2.jpg

I told the hubby what he did and showed pictures, he laughed and said, "he's messing with your head.". And of course I think it's funny and great and he's just playing with shapes and patterns (which is, ironically, age appropriate. �Just not with letters), and milking the baby act for great-grandma.

I've seen similar stories and I could see how it would make advocacy, well, less funny than this story. �So, it's a real thing I'm thinking of. �There's probably a better word. �"out of sync priorities". �Well, there's probably a real word for it. �So I was talking about this trait when it's inconvenient and I must have been thinking of a recent thread where the teacher's not seeing what the parent's seeing. �I think I was thinking of the girls hiding their talents thread where the teacher didn't think they were bored but the parents did.

And I saw your first entry, very nice! Can't wait to see other people's contributions and I will try to come up with a nice page or two to offer.

Just a quick update. I have figured out how to use templates and extensions a bit, to the extent I'm starting to dump stub pages in with reusable cross-cutting slices of content, mostly links at this point. Here's a sample page:
http://www.giftedwiki.org/index.php?title=Chess

I am still thinking through how the rating system for resources will be structured, how best to structure the pages for geographic areas, and a few other ideas.

Looking great!

Thanks a lot! I've cleaned up things a bit, and have a pretty good system for including links now. I'm currently working on these main items:

1) Categorization scheme for local resources (sorry for the delay, Giftodd)
2) Rating system for resources
3) Documentation on how to add new pages
4) Finishing adding all stub pages (the skeleton of the information) I can identify as useful

I found a few pre-existing rating and polling extensions for Wikimedia, but I haven't finished evaluating them and checking them for weaknesses. I might write my own too.

I wanted to knock out a simple scheme for including links to external resources because I wanted even stub pages to add a little bit of value initially to the average reader. I took the time to scope out which gifted forums are still at least nominally alive and kicking. I found that of the gifted-oriented sites that have forums, some are much more current on the article/non-forum content side, and others have more useful content in the forums. There are a lot of dead sites out there, unfortunately.

Another reason I've done the links that way is that I figure it might actually lead to more content being dumped into the wiki. I hope the links are helpful in searching for more content, and I've actually used them that way a couple of times already.

Links to a few pages so you can see what the latest look and feel and link changes look like. The content is extremely bare-bones so far, and I'm aware of many weaknesses (e.g. the redundance of the links on some giftedness-related pages), but I welcome any feedback.
chess Ruf's LOG DYS

I could use some thoughts on what sorts of info to include in the wiki that would be geographically linked, and how it should be structured. Here are some thoughts I've had:

There might be a geographic place page for a large area like the US or the Northeast US, territory in another country, etc. as well as more specific ones going down as many levels as helpful.

For each place page, it would be helpful to put-- what? Here are some initial ideas:
* Testers
* Other professional specialists (such as 2E-related therapists?)
* Gifted schools
* Other gifted programs
* Laws and regulations
* Interest groups

I figure each thing could have its own page. For some local support or other interest groups, their pages could even be a way to have a free web presence if they like, except that I think a lot of them probably already have their own Yahoo groups which serve that purpose.

ETA: Suggestions can be collecteed here.

Here's a regular wiki link to "learning styles"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles
I don't know what you want to do about things that already have a wiki page.

Right now I'm thinking of an entry for a "adequate yearly progress"
http://vagifted.org/VAG_Winter08Vol29No2.pdf
Plus Present level of education
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/present_levels.htm
Gifted or hard-working if you're ahead of the class you should still be going to school to Learn a year's worth of education.

But I don't really know anything about it. It just sounds good.
Maybe with the common core standards:
http://www.corestandards.org/

It has something to do with the MAP test. It's achievement based public education with regular placement tests. Is this true?

I would like to know how schools could monitor effort and progress, which is just as important as a grade. How do you motivate students to do their best and encourage good excutive functioning. How does a gifted school accomidate the PG kid?

If a topic's relevant to giftedness, it should be in the gifted wiki. There will be extra useful info on the topic that relates to giftedness that could never appear in Wikipedia, and we don't have to duplicate the work of Wikipedia editors on every page (note that we should not copy Wikipedia articles wholesale into the gifted wiki either, though we might include links to some of them).

With respect to learning styles, I think personally that there's such a welter of them, with such an apparent lack of scientific support, that as a major topic it might not work. I don't see learning styles as a general topic come up (much) in discussions here and elsewhere, nor most of the ones cited in that article. What I do see is occasional discussions about a child being visual-spatial instead of auditory, etc. So there's something there that should probably wind up in the wiki, but probably not a full explanation of every Ph.D. candidate's newly minted learning style theory.

I know that's not perfectly helpful. But in the end, the thing is that you can't screw things up badly if you think you've found a standard term for a topic of interest to the gifted community, make a page titled after that term, and do your best. Other editors will follow along later and improve the articles anyway, once the wiki starts to thrive.

I made a blog entry last year. Can I cut and paste it into the wiki? It's mine. Or Are you not supposed to?

Carol Dweck is a psychologist who is currently popular with some of the parents of gifted children.� She is the author�of a book called "Self-Theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development."� She put forth a debate over "entity theory of intelligence" vs. "incremental theory of intelligence."� Namely she says if you believe that you are born with a fixed level of intelligence rather than one that is adjustable through hard work you may be unwilling to take risks and learn new things because then you might be exposed that you don't know it all.� She says this happens in gifted children who remain unchallenged in their early years and are praised for being smart.� They internalize the praise as integral to their identity.� When they finally take on a task that is challenging later in life they feel as if since it didn't come naturally they are somehow less smart, and that they can't perform the task.� Whereas we all know practice makes perfect.� Her answer to this dilema is to challenge young people often and early and to praise them for their hard work and not for the stuff that comes effortlessly.�

You can post your own created content to the wiki. It doesn't matter that you posted it previously on your blog. As the creator you own the copyright rights and can donate the text to the wiki. Posting someone else's blog text wouldn't necessarily be okay; in that situation the best thing would be to paraphrase the ideas in the post, add links to the wiki entry for those ideas to major sources, link to the blog post if you think it's highly important and contains a good discussion of the topic, etc.

I think you should create a page named "Carol S. Dweck". I think it's best to create pages named with the full name of the person but without credentials, since credentials can change. (I broke this rule by putting "Ph.D." in the page title of the Deborah Ruf entry, but will fix it soon.)


After you create the page named "Carol S. Dweck", create a page named "Carol Dweck" to redirect to it. The only text in that page will be:
#REDIRECT [[Carol S. Dweck]]

Then any time someone searches for or links to "Carol Dweck" in the wiki, they'll go to the main Carol S. Dweck page.

I know that it is confusing at first. I am beginning to put some pages in to help new editors. Here's the first big one:
http://www.giftedwiki.org/index.php?title=Help:Page_Samples:General

ETA: I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote the post above about learning styles. I think the term "learning style" could have its own page and that would be a great addition, especially with a link to a page on visual spatial learning etc. as a major example. I just don't think it's valuable to add a page on every learning style that's been alleged by someone eager to add to the literature, especially with the recent questioning as to whether learning styles research is sound.

http://instructivist.blogspot.com/


http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2007/08/more-cold-water-on-learning-styles.html

There's this (slightly snarky) blog that disputes the value of "learning styles", so I thought you were serious. �They kinda said it would do kids more good to learn flexibility by learning to connect with different teaching styles. �I wholeheartedly agree with the Carol Dweck theory, ie. people grow. �So that gives me a different feeling about learning styles. I think kids should adapt. But I think the "learning styles" studies are great as far as they give teachers another tool to present material with. �Things are different from when I was growing up, but they used to say that if someone didn't understand something show them a different way. �There's usually several ways you can do something and one of them will click. �I'm not sure that's how "learning styles" are applied by whoever uses the findings. �It's just a topic. �Jenbrdsly who has a degree in early education just said in another thread here you can't be too rigid in sticking to formula when you're educating live children. �

I thought you meant what you said and you thought I was talking about something else, lol.

I decided to paint a mural this week so I didn't do much on the wiki. �I will though.

Great. Your Carol Dweck post spurred some extra thought on my part, and I am now putting together some stuff so that we can cite to books, and have the citations all in the same format and linked to a page for that book. When we have pages for books, they will hopefully have some structure that needs development too (stuff like various editions, etc.) and I still haven't put the rating/reviewing code into the wiki. It's all a work in progress.

I'll have a little extra time available this week. What topic or area could you use a little help with?

Huh, It might seem strange but the answer might be posted in a thread about disciplining a gifted kid.  A gifted kid's "currency" is often independence and the ability to make his own choices.  When your student is doing their best effort and progress reward them immediately verbally and with the promise of more  independently self-chosen projects.  Kids currency is rarely about things but more often about freedom and autonomy.  In both cases, the toddler listening and the student studying, it's a question of how the adult can help the child learn self discipline if it's not child-led. In both cases the answer may be to reward examples of self discipline with more independence. Which happens naturally but we need to be a little more obvious about pointing it out to the kids.