Fri 19.09.2014 - 10:30-12:40 - Grafika

School (Re)Organization in Digital Age according to Gifted Students  Paper

Presenter: Polonca Pangrčič
Author(s): Polonca Pangrčič (Elementary school teacher, OŠ Cerkvenjak - Vitomarci, Slovenia)

Nowadays we have a lot of ICT devices in classrooms, so the teachers can make the classes interesting. Wheeler (2008) and Wellings and Levine (2009) write about how to use them without being ‘scared’ and get better outcomes in students. 
So, we have high tech classes on one hand and ancient class organisation on the other hand. We must come to terms, that the technology is a big step in front of us and that the students (especially gifted, which are bored at their classes) walk with it. Some authors suggest different changes - from architecture to online learning or digital teacher corps.      
We will present results of a survey among 38 gifted students, which was performed at one Slovenian primary school, which has got a Tablet PC’s. We were interested how the use of ICT technologies affect the responsiveness of students, their interest in the matter and remembering information obtained in this way. Teachers have implemented 10 lessons with gifted students. Some teachers used Skype, other online classrooms, Wikipedia, apps, etc. Then we interviewed teachers about students' motivation, the progress of lessons and persistence of knowledge. The results were very promising; since the student are all fed up with everything, they showed outstanding collaboration, intrinsic motivation and the quantity of remembered material was above average.
In the conclusion we will present some solutions or directions, how to implement high technology into schools. This is important for gifted student education, because gifted get bored earlier and are more curious, especially in novelties. The improvement must be made in three major fields: teacher training, providing schools with modern devices, networking, software, etc. and change school policies to adjust curricula and class organization for digital education.