Summary and Reflection:
Enable, Enhance, and Transform: How Technology Can
Improve Gifted Students
Jingping Chen, David Yun Dai, and Yehan Zhou
Summary
In this article “Enable, Enhance, and Transform: How Technology
Can Improve Gifted Students.” Chen, Dai, Zhou (2013) presents a conceptual
framework of how technology use can enable, enhance, and transform gifted
education. Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013) explains
the functions of enabling, enhancement, and transformation of technology. The
enabling function of technology
increases the capacity of gifted education to reach out not only a larger
number of gifted students but also a more diverse range of talented students to
further their advancement through activities such as creating online learning
communities. The enhancement function of technology increases the quality of
services provided by gifted education through more tailored, authentic learning
experiences and better social, pedagogical, and technical support. And finally, the transformation function of technology reflects a qualitative shift
from the cumulated enabling and enhancing effects of technology use in the way
gifted education is delivered and received. Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013) argue
that technological innovations are means to an end and thus in and of
themselves will not create changes. They state that more innovative practices
of using technology in gifted education are urgently needed, and more
systematic, in-depth research is needed to move the field of gifted education
to a more contextual, developmental approach (Dai & Renzulli, 2008) and embrace
a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset (Dweck, 1999). Chen, Dai, and Zhou
(2013) hope that this enable, enhance, and transform framework can be
preliminary step in that direction.
Reflection
When the school that I am currently
teaching at received brand new laptops, I heard that some teachers were
actually afraid to bring their students to the lab or even afraid to let their
students handle the computer in fear that they will be responsible if the
student should break the machine. This article “Enable, Enhance, and Transform:
How Technology: How Technology Can Improve Gifted Students” by Chen, Dai, and
Zhou (2013) has really opened up my eyes as to how technology can be used not
only for gifted children but in a regular and ESL classroom as well. A book titled How People Learn, Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) articulated
five ways that new technologies can be used in the educational settings. 1) Bringing
exciting curricula based on real world problems into the classroom. 2) Providing
scaffolds and tools to enhance learning. 3) Giving
students and teachers more opportunities for feedback, reflection, and revision. 4) Building
local and global communities. 5) Expanding
opportunities for teacher learning.
These are
ways that the regular, ESL, and gifted program teachers can integrate
technology into their lessons. Currently I am teaching the G.A.T.E (Gifted and
Talented Education) program and one of my goals is to prepare my students for
the real world through the use of technology and various S.T.E.M activities. Everything mentioned in the book by
Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) are ways that I am currently doing or plan
to use in my class for the next few years. The framework for technology should
indeed be accessible, flexible, and truly learner centered. For the past two weeks, I introduced
Microsoft Word to my GATE students from K-5th grade. I showed them how to use word art, paste
pictures, create shapes, and how to enlarge font size. Once they understood how
not to be afraid to play with the different tabs on Microsoft Word, they began
helping each other with minimal help from myself, making it student centered.
I believe the enable, enhance, and transform framework is the
basis to move the field of gifted programs to a more contextual and
developmental approach. The enabling
function, or “making things happen”, can indeed prepare my gifted students for
college life through the creation of online learning classrooms. This year, in relation to preparing them for
college life, I created a classroom website that will allow me to keep in
contact with my students. They will be
able to create their own site as a branch to our class website where they can
chat with one another, turn in assignments, provide feedback, etc.
As for the enhance
function, or “making things better”, this is where educators can use various
ways to use technology to enrich their curriculum. Type 1 enrichment is through activities that
will not necessarily be covered in a regular classroom, type 2 enrichment is
considered group training activities where they use creative thing, problem
solving, and critical thinking skills to solve real world issues, and finally
type 3 enrichment is when the students pick a topic of interest and create
presentations of a tool of their choice. I just recently allowed my students to
try out a new presentation tool that they can use in the future besides
PowerPoint and they loved it. I introduced an animated presentation tool called
Blabberize, after working with the tool I asked them a few questions such as,
what can this tool be used for? Where can you use this? Do you see yourself
using this in the future? If so, for what? These types of enrichment definitely goes hand
in hand with the S.T.E.M activities I am trying to bring to the classroom.
Finally, the transformation function, or “making things
different” section in this article helped me understand that the tradition of
identifying gifted students through general measures of IQ or overall academic
achievement from tests are changing. A system called RLS now offers an
assessment that is responsive to individual strengths and interests which is an
assessment that our gifted program should use because every student performs
really well in certain areas. To this
day, the students who are recommended to the gifted program must score at an
80% percentile on the SAT10 to be tested. However, there are many kids who are
super bright but they did not make that 80 percentile on the SAT10. This is considered the traditional method. This
year, the gifted program will be using results from the ACT Inspire tests that
measures the students’ abilities in a different way.
Overall, technology is widespread and these three functions
of enable, enhance, and transform will be one way to shift the movement of
technology within a classroom, more so for gifted students. Personally, these
functions will work really well if students in an ESL and regular classroom are
given the opportunity. Like Chen, Dai, and Zhou (2013) mentioned, “technology
should be accessible”. Students need to
be situated in this global, high-tech knowledge age, and taking full advantage
of technology innovations in education (Bereiter, 2002;Collins &Halverson,
2009; Zhang 2012). In relation to Chen,
Dai, and Zhou (2013), technology in itself does not create changes, it is the
teacher and the innovation of technology that enable, enhance, and help
transform our students for the world they may face.
References
Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and mind in the knowledge age.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.).
(2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC:
National Academy Pres
Chen, J., Yun Dai, D., & Zhou, Y. (2013). Enable, Enhance, and
Transform: How Technology Use Can Improve Gifted Education. Roeper
Review, 35(3), 166-176.
doi:10.1080/02783193.2013.
Collins, A. M., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking
education in the age of technology: The digital revolution and the schools. New
York, NY: Teachers College Press
Dai, D. Y., & Renzulli, R. S. (2008). Snowflakes, living
systems, and the mystery of giftedness. Gifted Child Quarterly, 52, 114–130
Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self theories: Their role in motivation,
personality, and development. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press
Zhang, J. (2012). Knowledge construction in a technological
platform. In D. Y. Dai (Ed.), Design research on learning and thinking in
educational settings: Enhancing intellectual growth and functioning (pp.
201–224). New York, NY: Routledge.
