Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education Computer based training (CBT)

Absolutely. Also, Wikipedia is genuinely super easy to edit, and if anyone is sure they've found an error, what's stopping them correcting it? You may need a reliable source, but that's not usually too hard, and there's no better way to get across the message that anyone can edit than doing it yourself! DS and I put in a redirect one time when we looked some mineral up under one name and only found it under another, i.e. we made the alternative name we'd first tried redirect to the correct article - even that was pretty impressive to him.

A friend of mine once confessed that he'd tried to convince his child of the danger of Wikipedia by inserting a false statement into an article just before the child was about to use it as a source. Didn't work, because the false statement got removed in the 10 mins between his inserting it and the child looking. (I am not recommending this, though!)

In fact, far commoner than outright errors, IME, are articles that are confusingly written. Structuring an article well takes a lot more work and skill than correcting the odd fact. Still, it's where I go first, too.

I used to teach college classes back when the Internet was pretty new, and the garbage the students would use as sources was mind-blowing. It is always good to remember that anyone can put up anything on the Web; that doesn't make it true. At least with published books (not self-published), some publisher and/or editor somewhere had to say, "Yes, this is good. Let's print that." There's nothing like that on the Internet.

With that HUGE caveat, however, I love Wikipedia for factual material that is not controversial, like what the difference between granite and marble is, say, or what defines a hypergiant star.

The live links to sources and further material on the topic can be extremely useful and are *right there*. So easy!

Anything that might prompt any sort of fight? I don't look at Wikipedia. Even info about colleges is ripe for changes from collegiate rivals. And the battle over the Sci*nt*logy page is legendary! They finally shut that one down, I read.

And finally I am extremely wary about *any* Internet source for medical advice. Even relatively respectable sources make me skittish. I don't know their biases or who pays their bills. Waaaay too many people turn to Wikipedia for medical advice, IMHO.

I don't think anyone would question a person can learn things online. I think it is more a question of how big of a role that it should play. Your above example is a good one. He's learning something fun and applying to his life and that's a good thing. However, contrast learning accents to learning advanced foreign language or translation skills. Those sorts of skills would be difficult to develop online and time surfing from place to place may not be a good foundation for having the sort of focused persistence it takes to really learn a foreign language.


And, this would be an example of something else that concerns me. It can be helpful to find support online and this board is an example of that. But there can also be a point where that focus can take away from in real life relationships and not all online support or information is helpful. To give an example there is a proliferation of anorexia how to groups online. Support groups can actually promote feelings of being misunderstood by outsiders. And, feeling some sense of online connection may take away the push to find in real life friendships which is something all people need. Surely not everyone in the town shuns your son for an interest in musical theater. If that was the case there would be no musical theater group.

There are a lot of edit trolls on wikipedia, some of which are state sponsored.

Check out the entry on the Korean War. Someone put a lot of effort into it two years ago and then the NK trolls showed up and replaced it with garbage. This entry was partly restored and then locked.

Wikipedias in-house editors can be very biased no matter what support you provide. One person in particular who is high up in Wikipedia tried to ban me. I got tired of arguing with him. Google Roman Warm Period and then try to find it on wikipedia. Or google wikibullies.

I will start with wikipedia and then google a particular topic and read in-depth.

Google books has a lot of stuff online now for free, too.

I thought it a little amusing that a discussion about on-line learning became a debate on wiki.

I think CBT (as someone signified) can be great, as we are going to use CTY to supplement DD's education. They even have Chinese modules, which are really interesting to me. She goes to Mandarin once a week. Using some sort of model where she can hear it more would be great and being able to connect with other kids online (when she gets older) and have a discussion would be very cool.

And with CTY you do have help and interaction if you need it. The options are growing, which are wonderful as we struggle with homeschooling vs what we have. We can customize and give both.

I think wiki is great for looking up species. There are pictures and simple details. Great for a young child that wants to know "what is a ...?"

Ren

I have a high opinion of the Rosetta Stone software, though it can be pricey. Have you tried that?

Have you ever watched the television show Glee? I read this in the Wikipedia article: Michele plays Rachel Berry, talented star of the glee club who is often bullied by the Cheerios and football players.[35] Monteith plays Finn Hudson, star quarterback of the school's football team who risks alienation by his friends to join the glee club.

My son and some of the older kids in my son's musical theater group watch this show because they see the humor in the stereotypes. What they see in that show is similar to what they see in our stereotypical small football obsessed town. Our public school doesn't do musical theater but the kids in band are bullied by the sports kids and adults ignore it.

When my son says he is shunned, he is exaggerating only a little. Adults that don't know him will ask him what sports he plays and when he says that he doesn't do sports, he does musical theater, he just gets a funny look and an "Oh" and that is the end of the conversation, but when they ask the sports kids the same questions, they are treated much differently. Sports kids hear him talking like a very articulate adult to me at a local restaurant and talk about him being "gay" when he is not.

I talked to a college age friend of my son's in the group and he said he found it easier to just not tell people that he does musical theater. He thinks that some people here think if you are a boy in musical theater you have to be gay and he is not and my son is not. My son has friends but they are all in this musical theater group or are former members of the group. He is sad that there is no one here that shares his academic interests, but he has found friends that share his interests online.

For us, online learning is very important and when I asked my son if he thought he needed teachers, he used the following analogy. I don't remember exactly what he said but it was something like if he were a character in a video game, his character would require developers or designers but he has been audodidactic since birth. He thinks I worry too much about this and says we don't have to worry about an "early release date" causing his character to not be the best it could be because he is a "work in progress" and he always will be. I have no doubt that he will be lifelong learner.

Because he has all this wonderful information available to him online, he found that he could learn what he needed to learn, without much help from me, and no help at all from teachers in public school who believed their job was to make him color in the lines and stifle his curiosity and fit in when he couldn't, forcing us to find an alternative education. By the way, my friend is a special ed teacher at our public school and she got so tired of fighting the teachers' attitudes and getting no support for trying to do the right thing for the kids that she found another job. It is sad. It shouldn't be this way, but it is.

My husband, a Vietnam vet, who knows a lot about being shunned
from personal experience, sees that we don't fit in here, but we can't move because of family responsibilities. He wondered if it might have something to do with the dancing in musical theater because our community is also very religious. I don't know, but when my son and I visit a church that my mother went to for years, they look at us like we don't belong there and only a few of them speak to us. When I talked my son into trying another church we listened to the preacher say that migraine headaches and chronic pain and high blood pressure are caused by holding a grudge and if we would just forgive whoever we are so mad at we will be cured.

Lori,

Have you visited a predominantly black church in your area? From my experience, they tend to be more accommodating, open minded, and use music and theater in services. Your son might get a kick out of it.

I have seen Rosetta Stone but since the program at Columbia is amazingly cheap for the year ($300 for the whole year, 2.5 hours every Sat.) and the CTY is flexible, I am OK with the plan. But thank you.

I have realized I have seriously overscheduled DD. But at the same time, overscheduled PG kid, may be an oxymoron.

So that is my throw out topic. Can a PG kid be overscheduled?

Here is DD's framework: Mandarin on Sat. Ballet on Sun. Piano on Mon. Gymnastics on Tues. Chess on Wed. Science program on Thurs. Tennis on Fridays.

Tennis isn't her absolute favorite but the school offers it as an afterschool. She does a little in the summer. I do not expect Serena Williams. Just enough to go to tennis parties in her twenties. As I know I got a few dates...


Seriously, if the kids is PG, tends to boredom in the classroom, does overscheduling work? Maybe I should have started a new topic.

This is what I get for not going to the beach after going to dog beach and deciding to shower since I had to carry a 25 lb fish, the dog decided to drag in, instead of her plastic toy and I had to grab it and throw it into the bushes. I should have put the dog in the house and gone to the people beach instead of showering and having a glass of wine and posting....

Ren

My kid likes her downtime. Your DD's schedule would drive mine to breakdown in 2 weeks or less. We're going to try 3 activities this year (2 days of dance, one of swim), and I anticipate having to drop one of the dance sessions.

OTOH, there are kids (of unknown giftedness, but their parents have never mentioned any academic "ahead-ness") in her dance class who have an activity a day, multiple activities on some days, and then additional competitions for some activities, and love it.

DD needs a lot of sleep (11 hours or so), so needs to be asleep around 8:30pm on school nights. She gets home from school at 4:15, so there's not a lot of time for anything more than re-activity snack (without which activity is a fiasco) / travel (we live way out) / activity / travel back / dinner / shower / bedtime. One day with no downtime isn't too hard on her, but multiple days back-to-back tend to lead to bedtime creep, and then she starts the day off sleep-deprived, and it snowballs from there.