Gifted Institute Speaker Emphasizes Role of Curiosity, Technology in Classrooms

(Abilene, Texas) Reclaiming curiosity and recognizing that the today’s devices are the 2016 equivalent of paper and pencil are just two of the challenges facing today’s teachers of gifted students, according to a nationally known speaker Friday.

Dr. Brian Housand presented the workshop, “From Curious to Creative: Technology and Today’s Gifted Student,” to 160 teachers from the Big Country and Dallas areas. The six-hour long workshop held at Hardin-Simmons University is designed for gifted education teachers maintaining their certification levels.

Hosted by the Masters in Gifted Education program at HSU’s Irvin School of Education, the Gifted Institute has been a fixture on campus for more than three decades.

An associate professor at East Carolina University and co-coordinator of the Academically and Intellectually Gifted Program, Housand said teachers can tend to look as technology as an extra tool to use when it is a more integral part of instruction.

“As teachers, we are sometimes a bit reluctant to embrace technology in the way that our students do,” he said. “They were born into this world and they’ve never know a world without it. “

He said he offers tools to pair instruction with technology.

“One of the things that I really try to do is take the best of what teachers know, which is good instruction and good teaching, and then take some of the good parts of technology and then show how those two pieces really support one another,” he said. ”I think that is where the magic happens. You can’t really have one without the other. You have to have them both working together.”

Dr. Mary Christopher, organizer of the event and director of HSU’s Masters in Gifted Education program, said she had seen Dr. Housand speak at conferences and booked him for the event because of his relevant topic, engaging delivery, and hands-on style workshop.

Teachers were asked to bring a device like an iPad or laptop to the workshop.

Jacqua Cartwright, a third grade teacher in Hamlin, was looking forward to the event. She said her classroom has four iPads and her school has two computer labs for students.

“I’m not a technology guru so anything I can learn on how to use technology with gifted children is beneficial to me,” she said.

Housand said his workshops also focus on helping teachers reclaim a sense of curiosity and childlike wonder to better relate to the intense curiosity of many gifted students. Another emphasis is the importance of storytelling and helping teachers recognize what story their curriculum is telling.

Technology is not going away, Housand said, and teachers will benefit by embracing its presence.

“Computers, laptops, iPads, whatever digital device that people are using, that is the paper and pencil of 2016,” he said. “It’s not one of those things we can really do without.”