How Ingenious! ideas are shared yesterday, today, and beyond

We have always had ways of passing along information, skills, and learning to those around us.  As a child my great grandmother taught me to crochet.  These long chains, as well as hook latch rugs, became a fabric of who I am becoming.  We talk about how the art of passing along those "old fashioned" skills is now becoming obsolete as fast as handwriting is losing ground as an art form.  It hit me a couple of weeks ago that this is not the case.  We can celebrate and learn from one another through a variety of forms of social media in ways we could not in the past. 

Although my grandma is in her 80's, she is connected to us through social media.  Even though she posts private messages on her wall because she hasn't found the message button in Facebook, she is sharing her life with us.  Robyn shared that her daughter is learning to sew and her and her grandmother look up patterns online.  Imagine the sewing forums available with ideas from other grandmothers and their saavy teens and 20 somthings.  Not only could they look up patterns, but together they could watch youtube videos with sewing techniques that grandma hasn't learned yet.  Voila, we are suddenly educating two generations of learners--and perhaps 3 if mom is involved in the process.

Maite and Joanna both spoke of using YouTube for inspiration.  Joanna also mentioned using Pinterest in place of print media, like magazines she used to pine over.  The printing press revolutionized learning in the same way, I believe, the internet has the potential to change the way we learn today, tomorrow, and beyond.

Yesterday a friend told me that although she knows the videos I create are very valuable, she has less time to watch a video than to read a post because we read and process information 6-10 times faster than we can watch a video.  Wow, I hadn't realized that.  I sometimes prefer to read content as well.  We must provide our readers/students with more than one way to process information.  This blog is for those of you who prefer to have text based information.  It is also for those of you who love learning from others.  This is the beginning of a wonderful conversation we will weave.

As I worked my way though my PhD program, I kept hearing that the dissertation process was our way of joining a conversation that was occurring among academics. It was our job to research the conversation so we had something new and interesting to say.  Once we had the background information we could join in the conversation by contributing a small body of new knowledge to move the conversation along.  That is the purpose of this blog, to hold a conversation with you and for you to build connections with one another.  You are all reading content on the web and beyond that will contribute to our conversation.  Please reply with your ideas for how your new learning can be used with gifted learners in clever new ways in the comment box below.

What are we going to talk about you ask?  That is up to you!  My passion and areas of expertise are gifted education and what it takes to educate 21st century gifted learners. I will share tips, tricks, tools, and ideas with you and provide space on Pinterest to organize those ideas so you’re Ingenius! ideas will not overwhelm or discourage you.  Our next conversation will focus on organizing your resources.  

Until then, please introduce yourself so we can welcome you into our conversation.  Please feel free to share how you learned as a child and how you are currently learning.  I look forward to all of your ingenious! ideas.

In the meantime, if you are in the Treasure Valley, Idaho area I would love to meet you.  I have been invited to speak on Educating 21st Century Gifted Learners on the 2013 DENapalooza Tour at the capitol building in Boise on Saturday, May 11th, 2013. If you can make it I would love to see you.

The event is 9am-4pm—I speak first thing in the morning in the main Auditorium.  The event is free and here is the link to register. It is an amazing opportunity for teachers and I can’t wait to learn more.