Westerville City Schools Office of Gifted Education - 5 views
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Suzanne Palmer on 09 Feb 10After reviewing the Identification brochure (accessible on the right-hand side of this site) and ODE's "Who is Gifted in Ohio by Law and Rule?", what questions do you have about the gifted identification process in Ohio or Westerville? What do you see as the biggest challenge in the gifted identification process in Westerville?
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Laura Hance on 16 Feb 10So. . .do you know that if you are writing a comment about link, and click back on the link to look something up, when you return to our wcsgifted page, everything you have typed up to that point is gone ARGHHHH!!!!! Tip of the day: Always click Post before navigating away from this page!
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Laura Hance on 16 Feb 10And I was just about finished with this assignment - kinda like the dog ate my homework! It appears as if the Westerville identification process follows the criteria outlined by the Ohio Department of Education. I would say that the broad range of gifted identification would be the greatest challenge. I also wonder about the 4 year age gap between the two grade levels when screening instruments are administered. The developmental differences between a student in Grade 2 and a student in Grade 6 are vast. I am aware that students can be identified by other means as well; however I would venture to believe that a majority of students are identified by these group screening tools. I am curious why students are not rescreened earlier than Grade 6?
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Laura Hance on 16 Feb 10My final comment has to do with the technology piece of this course. I am still trying to differentiate between the advantages of using the Wiki and the advantages of using Diigo. I was thinking that Diigo was a tool to organize Online Resources and the Wiki was a forum for discussion and uploading other resources. If that is the case, would this assignment not be better off posted on the Wiki - perhaps creating a new page in the Ashland folder entitled "Identifying the Gifted - What are the Challenges?" where we could post comments and respond to each other? I'm struggling a little with the organization of the two sites and how they work together - any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks:-) Hope everyone is enjoying our winter wonderland!
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Suzanne Palmer on 17 Feb 10Thanks for sharing the interesting tidbit of information about posting. Sorry for the frustration. I guess I should address your final comment as this seems like the appropriate place to comment. It is my understanding that the Wiki is not suited to the discussion but the Diigo is. Eric, can you comment as well on this?
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Suzanne Palmer on 17 Feb 10Laura, You raise some valid questions in the time between whole group testing. We started testing in 2nd grade because years ago our gifted programming did begin in 3rd grade so 2nd grade testing information was used for that purpose. About 6 years ago when we went through all of the cuts, we lost our 3rd grade programming but by that time we were a BFK district and needed that 2nd grade data point so whole group testing has remained there. Also, up until a few years ago, the next whole group testing opportunity did take place at 5th grade. When 5th grade began testing 4 areas for the OAT, it was my understanding that the decision was made to move it to 6th grade because of the overwhelming amount of testing at that grade level. 6th grade only had the reading amd math OATs. You raise the same question that many people ask. Another important factor to consider is that testing is expensive.I don't know if we will be able to get that changed or not. We are in compliance with the state and our identification. And you are correct that we do offer individual testing based on referrals but this is a small majority of our students who are identified in this way.
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Eric Calvert on 22 Apr 10On the "Wiki vs. Diigo" question, my opinion is that Diigo has better features for facilitating discussions. (However, discussion is possible in the wiki as well to a certain extent using the "comment" feature at the bottom of most pages.) Diigo, though, lets you comment on specific sections of most web resources and can "thread" discussions, which the comment feature of PBWorks does not support. While Diigo and PBWorks do have some overlapping features, I mainly use PBWorks to collaboratively CREATE new content or share already-made resources that are not elsewhere online (e.g. policy documents, curriculum maps, or unit/lesson plans that would otherwise be locked in a physical file cabinet or on one teacher's local hard drive.) I mainly use Diigo to bookmark, annotate, and share resources that are already online. (For example, interesting online articles, lesson plans from online curriculum repositories etc.) Occasionally, though, I will use the two tools in tandem -- for example, creating a page using PBWorks which I then bookmark into Diigo. (Remember that the pages you make in the wiki are really web pages, so you can use Diigo's tools on top of them, and share and discuss them with anyone who also has access to the wiki.) For example, on other projects, my collaborators and I have started "draft" documents as wiki pages and then used Diigo to comment on the draft and suggest changes and additions.) Long story short, though, think of the wiki as a place to collaborative make new things, and think of Diigo as a place to store, share, find and talk about things that are already out on the web. Hope this helps clarify things a bit. If not, though, please let me know.
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Laura Hance on 23 Apr 10Thanks for the clarification - this does help. So. . . when asked to view and comment on a Power Point or a PDF document. . . what is the best way to do this? I know these can these these be uploaded into the Wiki, but then are they actually part of the webpage or a separate entity. From what you are saying, if they are part of the webpage, we should be able to use the Diigo tools??? Just clarifying again. Thanks for taking the time to help me understand this better.
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Eric Calvert on 23 Apr 10No problem -- glad to hear that made some sesne. Technically, when a web page links to a PowerPoint file, the file isn't really "part of" the webpage in the sense that the actual content of the PowerPoint presentation gets added to the HTML that makes up the webpage. The PowerPoint file is still a separate entity, but the link tells your web browser where on the Internet to find it. ("Uploading" a file to the wiki actually makes a copy of your original document on a remote web server, where it also gets assigned a unique web address. When you create a link to an uploaded file, then, you're not really embedding the actual file in the wiki page, but a quick-and-easy way to access that file.) Unfortunately, the only way to make comments within PowerPoint files (on a "slide by slide" basis) is to use the commenting features in the PowerPoint program itself, then re-save and re-upload your commented version, so this gets tedious pretty quickly if you're trying to have an ongoing online conversation.) It's a similar story with PDF files. It's really a matter of personal preference whether to comment on a PPT or PDF file you link to from a wiki page using diigo or the wiki itself. Personally, I'd probably opt to do it in Diigo just because I like its commenting features better than the ones in PBWorks and because doing it in Diigo would make it part of my Diigo library, which means I could quickly find it again in the future if I needed it without having to remember where it is. I'm in a bunch of different wikis that overlap topics, so sometimes if I read something that I want to find again in six months or a year I have trouble remembering if it was in Wiki A, Wiki B, or Wiki C. Therefore, having a central index like my Diigo library in helps keep me from losing stuff and saves me time searching for things I've read in the past and want to access again. Hope you have a good weekend.