Conceptualizing the use of online technologies for gifted secondary students.

Views of giftedness and its place in education have changed substantially in recent years. There is now a growing recognition that gifted learners are not by definition advantaged but rather, as a result of their specific characteristics, are as much "at risk" of educational underachievement as other, more readily recognized at-risk groups (Peterson & Colangelo, 1996; Reis & McCoach, 2000). Therefore, there is a need to create programs that respond to their distinctive needs. Emerick (1992) recognized the existence of this at-risk group and argued:

   The gifted underachiever who
   had reversed patterns of academic
   underachievement in this
   study exhibited characteristics
   also associated with the highly
   creative and gifted individual:
   independence of thought and
   judgment, willingness to take
   risks, perseverance, above-average
   intellectual ability, creative
   ability, and an intense love for
   what they were doing. (p. 144)

This paper creates a link between two views--giftedness is more than above average IQ and information communication technology (ICT) is a way of creating a space in which secondary school-aged, gifted individuals can explore their own ways of building a supportive, virtual learning community for people who might otherwise remain isolated and disconnected. This additional, less-structured learning experience supplements the usual school-based experiences. Standard classroom curriculum experiences are excluded from this online learning experience.

There are numerous theories of giftedness. Renzulli's (1978, 1986) model of giftedness offers a more focused perspective on diverse facets of giftedness than traditional views based on IQ tests (Gross, 1993; Terman, 1925) or, more recently, broad views such as those of Gardner (1999) on multiple intelligences. Giftedness based on IQ tests is restrictive and assumes that the concept is static over time. Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences asserts that there are nine types of intelligence that can be elicited from learners, and therefore, does not identify genetic personality traits of gifted individuals. Renzulli's model recognizes giftedness as an attribute of select individuals, and is based on a gifted individual possessing above average ability, creativity, and commitment to tasks. These characteristics make explicit a dimension that is not captured in other frameworks-- specifically, commitment to task--and are important for working with gifted individuals particularly in an online learning environment.

Monks and Mason (2002, p.146) classify Renzulli's approach as an "achievement oriented model," which is useful for developing a conceptual framework for using online technology to cater to gifted individuals' needs since it does not require the probing of elusive and controversial concepts such as IQ and interpersonal intelligence. Furthermore, this approach permits the acknowledgement of a dimension of learning that will be important in online activities, namely gifted students' ability to persist independently and, at least in part, to generate new understandings independently. This is also consistent with more recent views of education that focus on the interactions among teachers, institutions, and learners rather than on achievements based on inherent characteristics of the learner. An achievement-oriented approach also avoids some of the obvious disadvantages associated with the socioeconomic and cultural advantaging of specific groups in standardized measures, such as IQ tests, because it acknowledges how giftedness requires persistence by the individual.

Learning Online for Gifted Students

The framework proposed in this paper explores the potential use of online technologies, which can include online management systems, e-mail, Web-based resources or personal digital assistants, and mobile phones as means of engaging gifted, secondary-school students. If the needs of these students are overlooked due to a lack of resources and/or expertise in their schools, they may be at risk of boredom and educational failure. The all-encompassing effect of online technology in creating a learning environment has been described by T. Anderson (2004b). He identified four capacities of online media as (a) the flexibility for learning in terms of time and place; (b) the vast amount of content on the World Wide Web (WWW); (c) content supported in varied formats such as multimedia, video, text, and images; and (d) the creation of communication-rich learning contexts that support both synchronous and asynchronous modes of learning. These capacities potentially allow gifted students to have autonomy in their learning. Our framework also builds on expectations of today's adolescents as "digital natives" (Prensky, 2001, p. 1) who look to ICT as a means of engaging themselves in education and who are eager participants in virtual communities of learning. When educational approaches do not meet such expectations, these digital natives may become "enraged and disengaged" (Prensky, 2003, p. 60). Similar arguments have been put forward by Steve Goodman (2003) who suggests that the gap between young people's school and personal experiences disconnects them from schools, whereas media literacy through (video) production can empower them. A gifted students' membership in today's technologically oriented society empowers and motivates them to readily embrace this new type of learning opportunity with ease and comfort.

In this online learning framework, .like-minded, gifted students from within a school or a cluster of schools are brought together into a virtual classroom (see Hiltz, 1994) to pursue a specific area of giftedness, or to work on projects identified by the teacher as extending their passion for learning. Such a framework is consistent with findings from meta-analyses of the needs and responses of gifted students. J. A. Kulik and C. C. Kulik's (1982, 1984) meta-analyses have shown that grouping gifted students into a program has a positive effect on their learning. Similarly, Roger (1991) found many positive benefits of grouping students and recommended that gifted students spend the most part of their schooling with others of similar interests and abilities. Online learning offers a convenient way for like-minded students to communicate in groups. Another virtue of online learning is that students do not have to be publicly identified or singled out, alleviating the peer pressure to conform to the norms in a regular classroom, and allowing such students to sustain pre-existing social relationships if they wish. It also permits students with varying degrees of giftedness to work together online and benefit from the interactions with each other: for example, a mildly gifted older student and an exceptionally gifted younger student could work together online on a topic and benefit from their cooperation. In addition, students working on specific topics can share their learning with other members of the online community and benefit from each other's ideas and knowledge.

Maker (1982) has argued that gifted students need to possess intrinsic characteristics that will adapt to different learning contexts. These characteristics are needed in order for them to succeed in an online-learning context where the instruction is mainly asynchronous rather than concurrent, and facilitated rather than directed. It is necessary that they are highly motivated, independent learners who have the desire to learn and who extend themselves both academically and socially. These students need to be able to plan and take ownership of their own growth (Feldhusen & Wood, 1997) by assessing and reviewing their own interests, achievements, and learning styles; electing to pursue appropriate areas for investigation; setting achievable goals that are academic, career oriented, and social; and reflecting on these goals throughout the pursuit of the challenges that they have set. Similar to Renzulli (1978, 1986), Feldhusen and Wood (1997) argued that gifted students are able to engage in learning activities with reduced involvement from their teachers. Nevertheless, in a study by Feldhusen (1998), this capacity for self-directed learning in individual and small group work grew rapidly and increased when teachers provided initial directions and good instructional materials. The desire to extend learning and the capacity to self-direct their own learning are characteristics that resonate well with gifted students. Online learning addresses the pre-eminent need of gifted students for greater challenge than the regular classroom can provide, and matches their pace and level of learning. The readily available information on the WWW offers a potential for these students to extend their learning in a way that is within their own control. They will, however, need to be aware of the many pitfalls of Web searches such as the amount of time required to find suitable information, copyright, and authenticity of information. This means that the ability to promote a critical evaluation of resources will be a vital part of the educational experiences that the approach will need to foster.

Motivation and a Common Goal for Online Learning

Gifted students working asynchronously online will need high motivation and a common goal to learn together. The motivation to cooperate may not arise spontaneously so there is a vital role for teachers to create that motivation extrinsically. The approach adopted in the conceptual framework for this paper makes use of Papert's (1991, 1993) view of constructionist learning. His studies, based on working with children using Logo, a programming language designed for children to develop their cognitive skills in mathematics, suggested that children are more engaged in learning when constructing a public artifact that others will see, critique, and use than if they are only required to produce something to be handed in to the teacher. This public artifact can be anything from a work of art to a scientific theory of the universe. In this regard, the gifted students studying a topic online will also need a forum through which to display knowledge gained.

The product could take a variety of forms as individual students draw on their particular intelligence strength(s) to create it. The product could take on more traditional forms, such as a creative essay; a research report in which students identify a scientific or social problem, undertake an investigative study, and write a mini thesis; or an analytical report in which students explore issues and texts. Alternatively, the product could take a more creative approach, such as constructing an animated product using Macromedia Flash or a drama activity/play, which is digitally recorded and edited.

The product could be presented to an audience of school peers, to educators and parents, in a gifted-student organized peer conference, or on a Web site. The construction stage draws on Renzulli's creative-productive dimension of giftedness with an expectation that the products created by gifted students will demonstrate creativity and a level of thinking and problem solving that is more advanced than expected at their age.

Underlying Online Learning Theories for the Conceptual Framework for Gifted Students

The theoretical approach for our conceptual framework for the use of online technologies to meet the needs of gifted students is based on the online learning theories of Mayes (1995) and Garrison, T. Anderson, and Archer (2000). Mayes' cognitive approach to learning online involves an iterative process across three dimensions: conceptualization, construction, and dialogue. Conceptualization refers to the learner's current state of understanding about a topic that results from an interaction between the learner's existing understanding and the new information. Self-reflection and dialogue with others are important developmental processes that can influence this conceptualization. In the construction stage, this understanding is applied and tested through the performance of meaningful tasks. Feedback on the action in the construction stage is provided through dialogue between learners and their teachers that tests the adequacy of the learner's conceptualization. If the learner's conceptualization is inadequate, the re-conceptualization cycle recurs again through this action and feedback loop. Dialogue is the dimension that underpins all the other activities and the iterative nature of the process.

Garrison et al. (2000) refer to their conceptual model of online learning as a "community of inquiry" model. The model suggests that if sufficient levels of three components of learning are present, deep and meaningful learning will occur. These three components are (a) cognitive presence, which refers to the learning and development of knowledge (content-based) and critical thinking skills that support learning; (b) social presence, a learning environment that is safe and supportive where students can discuss and express opinions; and (c) teaching presence, adult support of learning and development of skills and knowledge in students.

The online learning theories of Mayes (1995) and Garrison et al. (2000) cater to students studying course subjects online where structured course materials provide the content and boundaries of the topic to be learned. The online environment replaces face-to-face meetings and provides a means of communication among peers, as well as between teachers and students, so that interaction can take place either asynchronously in students' and teachers' own time and place, or synchronously through chat sessions. Despite the lack of face-to-face communication, the online setting is clearly a specific kind of social environment. The requirement for the social environment is based on the belief that there is pedagogical benefit in having access to discussions generated as learning dialogues. One of the main challenges of designing online learning programs is to structure them in a way that thinking and dialogue will be stimulated to occur sufficiently frequently in an environment where face-to-face meetings do not take place.

Theoretical Dimensions in the Proposed Framework

The learning frameworks of Mayes (1995) and Garrison et al. (2000) cater specifically to students studying structured coursework subjects online. The framework for the online learning of gifted students that is proposed in this paper caters to both structured coursework-type learning and unstructured, open learning for both secondary and adult students. The focus of this paper is on the latter type of learning for secondary students. The framework proposed aims to capitalize on the characteristics of gifted students--being motivated and intelligent, demonstrating a high level of task commitment, and having the ability to, with some assistance, learn responsibly and independently in a self-directed learning environment. In an online learning environment the students will use a variety of culturally developed skills to evaluate and learn from the vast amount of information available on the WWW. These skills include decision-making as well as investigative, research, analytical, evaluative, and questioning skills; identifying problems and seeking solutions; and communicating their findings in a style best suited to the context. They should be able to realistically and critically reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses. They will be able to investigate and learn about a topic in depth and extend their knowledge as far as they choose to take it.

A Socially-immersed Learning Environment

The theoretical model developed for this paper is an adaptation of the online learning theories of Mayes (1995) and Garrison et al. (2000) as shown in Figure 1. T. Anderson (2004a) describes the model as supporting a community of learning with three essential layers: thinking skills (cognitive presence), interpersonal relations (social presence), and a layer addressing the organization of formal education (teaching presence). While Garrison et al. describe the layers of presence, Mayes highlights the processes involved in learning. In our model, these processes are infused into the layers from Garrison et al., shown in Figure 1. The model identifies within these layers the dialogic processes that occur between people or between people and concepts. We have also extended the layer of interpersonal relations to include interactions with mentors. We have located these interactions with mentors within Garrison et al.'s social presence layer that we have relabeled student presence to make explicit the place in our model for mentors, who can be either physically outside the formal educational context or physically within the formal space, where they may develop a connection with the student that differs from the conventional teacher-student relationship.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In this model, a socially-immersed learning paradigm is central to knowledge construction. An online learning environment such as this can create a community of learners in which social interactions with peers and a teacher are crucial in developing critical reflections and constructing knowledge (T. Anderson, 2004b; Lipman, 1991; McConnell, 2000; Palloff & Pratt, 1999). The social and dialogic environment is central to the success of the learning of gifted students online because of the open nature of the online tasks where students select, pursue, and evaluate an area of interest without standard curriculum materials. The socially interactive and frequently dialogic nature of the learning occurs from the beginning and throughout the learning process. Whereas much of the discussion above has emphasized the independent contributions of gifted learners, the central role of the teacher in guiding the process-both overall and at critical points of conceptualizing and constructing knowledge--needs to be highlighted. The teacher's critical awareness and facilitation and maintenance of discourse are crucial to the success of learning. The teacher will also be a motivating force for the students to persist with the learning, particularly for adolescent students who may not yet have developed the emotional maturity to work in a physically lonely environment.

Social presence in asynchronous discussions in online courses at the tertiary level has been reviewed by Swan (2003) who cites studies by researchers such as Gunawardena and Zittle (1997); Leh (2001); Poole (2000); Rourke, T. Anderson, Garrison, and Archer (2001); and Ruberg, Moore, and Taylor (1996). Swan (2003) finds that asynchronous discussions are a significant factor for success with online learning, and that the social presence in an online environment correlates significantly with students' perceptions of satisfaction with and learning from online courses. The benefits as perceived by students in such an environment include a more equal and democratic atmosphere for learning than in traditional classroom discussions; consequently, all voices are heard with much less dominance by the teacher or any single group of students. Students create a community of online learners by projecting their own presence in an online environment, and are provided with opportunities to digest their peers' contributions as well as write their responses and reflect on them before posting. Hence, an online learning environment does not deprive gifted students of social interactions. This is an important factor to consider with gifted students who often demonstrate social incompetence due to a lack of like-minded peers with whom they can interact.

In the model that we have presented, we have highlighted the dialogic and concept forming processes that infuse the layers of presence. We have attempted to identify how the processes of conceptualization (the formation of cognitive representations) are embedded within multiple layers of presence. In what follows, we exemplify our layering by identifying some of the possible tasks that will draw on and shape the social relations, and then indicate how these webs of interaction surround the concept-forming process.

Gifted students begin learning through collaborative efforts and negotiations involving teachers and peers on agreed upon topics or problem-solving tasks. They propose areas of learning according to their own worldviews, belief structures, interests, and/or perceptions of importance, either at the school level or at a more personal level. The following are just a few examples:

1. They could select to study genetic inheritance as part of an extension of the school curriculum. They could look into a series of media reports on the latest developments in gene research and biotechnology, get a grasp of the science concepts behind these reports, evaluate the accuracy and implications of these reports, and provide their opinions on social and technical issues associated with the topic that they are investigating.

2. They could investigate and discuss societal issues affecting the environment at the local and/or national and global level. They could develop an understanding of global warming or thinning of the ozone layer and carry out an analysis of the myths and facts in various media reports.

3. They could investigate and discuss wars between countries as well as variations in human rights between countries, from either a historical or a current affairs perspective.

4. They could investigate effective ways of learning a foreign language based on their own successful experiences, propose an idea which will be tested with a small cohort of students at their schools, and write a report on the findings.

5. They could predict, based on business reviews or other relevant documents, movements of peoples, cultural trends within and between different countries, and science and technology trends, leading to the formulation of views for the future directions of human society.

How the students might conceptualize these topics is likely to be highly variable, both individually and culturally. What and how they might propose to investigate and demonstrate their understandings will be equally varied. The contribution of a well-informed teacher is vital for the students' learning in such an environment. The teacher will guide the learning, encourage group participation in a topic by negotiating the topics to be undertaken, and locate mentors with expertise for the students in areas of knowledge/experience with which (s)he is not familiar. In a learning environment with no defined content or structure coming from the teacher (unlike in a regular classroom), attributes of giftedness, such as task commitment, creativity, and above average intelligence, play an important role in ensuring the success of learning. Together with other characteristics of giftedness, such as the capacity to learn quickly, the ability to solve problems more readily, and the capacity to manipulate ideas and make linkages will allow the students to explore and learn in depth. Online learning is not restricted to school hours. Students with access to computers can go home and continue learning if necessary.

Conceptualization--Knowledge Construction

Gifted students immersed within a socially supportive learning environment will cycle between conceptualization and knowledge-construction processes (Mayes, 1995) to produce a final product that will demonstrate their understanding of the topics undertaken for their studies. They engage with the learning materials at a personal level, consult socially for clarification, and construct and demonstrate their understanding in varied meaningful ways. These processes are key components of the learning theories of constructivism (Brunet, 1966; Piaget, 1955, 1972; Vygotsky, 1962, 1975), all of which advocate that individuals construct their own representations of knowledge and build upon pre-existing knowledge through reflection on experiences (metacognition). Real learning can only take place when the learner is actively engaged in the process, either at the operational level of physical manipulations or at the cognitive level of processing information or stimuli, or some combination of both. Social interactions provide a scaffolding dimension to the learning. In recognizing this, there is a need to accommodate different levels of thinking and to follow the process of conceptualization from the concrete to the abstract and metacognitive. This area is accommodated within the centre of the model that we have presented, but requires a framework for the recognition of these processes to be operationalized.

As Christopher, Thomas, and Tallent-Runnels (2004, p.167) have pointed out, "One issue that must be addressed in relation to online discussion forums regards the actual learning that occurs in this environment." Working with university students, they made use of an updated version of Bloom's educational objectives that permits easier recognition of the distinction between low, medium, and high levels of thinking. Their approach for the online context builds on L. Anderson and Krathwohl's (2001) revision of Bloom's original work (1956), and offers a way in which levels of thinking can be identified in the dialogic texts produced by students. This approach can be adopted for gifted, secondary-school-age students learning online.

How Gifted Students Can Learn Within an Online Environment

Using features based on a developmental psychology framework that identifies how gifted students learn (Munro, 2005), we indicate how the education that can occur within the online environment meets the learning needs of gifted student:

1. Gifted students need a challenge or reason to learn. In an online learning environment, gifted students identify their own areas of challenge and are provided with the autonomy to manage their own learning. They have access to the WWW and seek out information that will help to address their challenges. They become motivated and independent learners who will draw on a range of learning skills characteristic of gifted abilities--decision-making and the research skills of investigation, analytical, and evaluative questioning--to arrive at solutions that address their challenges.

2. Gifted students need to know where they are going and see a pathway to their goals. Having identified the area of learning, negotiations with the teacher to frame their goals will assist the gifted students to visualize the outcome of their learning. A plan based on the goals will help direct the students towards what they want to achieve.

3. Gifted students make links with and use what they know about the topic. Gifted students have wide general knowledge and very extensive knowledge in their areas of interest. They will draw on their existing experiential and cognitive knowledge as they search for information on the WWW. Their questions help advance their understanding and recode or add the new information to their existing knowledge.

4. Gifted students learn new ideas in specific contexts and are able to transfer and generalize on the basis of the new knowledge. The context in which the challenge is posed will define the learning. Contexts that are meaningful and pose real life challenges will favor gifted learning. An online environment will provide them with the opportunities to develop new ideas and pursue learning as deeply as they wish within the context. They demonstrate transfer of knowledge to a great extent by the questions they pose in the online discussion forums and in the product that they produce as a result of the learning.

5. Gifted students deepen their understandings, abstract what they have learned, and link more broadly with what is known. A characteristic of gifted students is their ability to concentrate for longer periods of time than their non-gifted peers. An online learning environment allows the gifted students this opportunity because they are not directed by the teachers' instructions or constrained by the resource or time issues within a classroom. They are able to work on their projects outside the classroom, including their homes, if they possess a computer with Internet access. In such an environment, they are able to be creative in their development of learning strategies to link and move easily between episodic, abstract, and procedural aspects of an idea. In this way, they organize the new knowledge for assessment and further learning purposes.

6. Gifted students link positive emotions with new knowledge and are able to identify how they learn and monitor their own progress. The students will learn more positively in an online environment where they are able to manage their own learning. They are able to draw on metacognitive strategies to learn effectively by pausing, reflecting on their thinking, and consolidating ideas learned. In this way they automatize their knowledge and move on to new ideas. While many of these learning needs or characteristics can be found in all learners, their concentrated presence in gifted learners and the ability of an online environment to respond to all of them suggest that online environments can create more positive options for gifted learners than their nongifted peers. Furthermore, gifted students' commitment to task (Renzulli, 1986) will better prepare them to benefit from the independent and open-ended nature of online learning.

Issues Related to Online Learning

Not all learning and uses of technology are equally accessible due to variation in students' socioeconomic status (SES). Belcastro (2002) has compiled a list of the institutions providing online courses for gifted students at primary- and secondary-school levels, particularly those servicing rural gifted students. Most of these courses are run by gifted education centers, colleges, and universities and incur costs. Other issues pertaining to online learning in the home environment are the cost, reliability, and speed of network connections. However, the online learning proposed in this paper will take place more often within the school environment, where access to these facilities is provided by the school. This practice should reduce the influence of SES variables. Hence, the support of the school is crucial in providing greater engagement in education for gifted learners from the full range of economic circumstances, some of whom lack access to the benefits of formal education because standard educational processes are not able to respond to their needs.

Questions posted online do not always receive instant feedback--the response time depends on when the person queried logs on to read the question and provide feedback. This problem can be addressed through negotiations between the students and teachers on the regularity of checking for questions and responses. Organizing synchronous, small group chats on a regular basis would assist with effective communication in an online learning environment. Face-to-face meetings of small groups of students at the local level are also an option.

It is anticipated that the gifted students will be required to write in the standard version of the appropriate language, which is more time consuming than speaking. The time consuming nature of writing in an online learning environment is another issue. Messages posted on discussion forums need to be appropriately formulated so that misinterpretations do not occur when being read by someone who does not share the same context. As discussed above, while the social presence is felt in online learning, the nonvisual aspect of learning is associated with delayed feedback, and nonverbal language, such as facial expressions, is lacking. The role of the teacher in ensuring a friendly and supportive environment for learning is, therefore, crucial.

The Teacher in this Online Learning Framework

The learning approach for gifted students described in this paper will cater well to groups of students within a school or a cluster of schools, even clusters of schools outside contiguous areas. Ideally, schools should support students' learning by allocating time within the school program and access to computer facilities. For those with access to home computers, the learning can continue in the home environment.

The teacher in this learning framework could be a regular classroom teacher or an educator from a tertiary institution who is well informed, confident, and interested in working with gifted students. The role taken up by the teacher could be part of a teaching responsibility in a school or within a cluster of schools. The role could be carried out in an extracurricular context where some compensation is made to the teacher by the school(s) or parents of the gifted students. More than one teacher could be involved. (S)he would need to be a person who is comfortable handling the technical aspects of an online management system such as WebCT, Blackboard, or Moodle. (S)he could have a background from any discipline, but would need to be able to take initiatives to undertake research or seek assistance when faced with an obstacle; for example, an inability to respond to the students' questions, or the occurrence of technical difficulties.

The teacher's presence online is important to ensure the continuity of learning, ideally on a daily basis. The responsibilities of the teacher include: providing a generic outline of the learning structure, negotiating the groups and topic to be learned, assisting with developing a structure and plan for each topic, providing prompts to assist students development of critical thinking skills, encouraging participation online through questioning and comments, ensuring a safe working environment for discussions and questions, tracking students' progress by reminding them to submit drafts on a regular basis, having one-to-one conversations with students with problems, and providing guidance and advice through his/her own general knowledge or expertise, or seeking out mentors in specialized areas to assist the students.

Depending on the expertise of the teacher with the online management systems, s(he) may also need some specialized training to become familiar with features of the online system, and how best to capitalize on those features for more effective work with the students.

Research Implications with Online Learning at the School Level

In the last decade millions and even billions (McKenzie, 1999) of dollars have been invested in getting schools connected online in different countries (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority [VCAA], 2002). Questions have been raised regarding the huge level of investment and expenditure, and the benefits ICT brings to students' learning in the classroom (Fuchs & Woessmann, 2004). Evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of technology in teaching and learning is complex, and complicated by a number of variables such as the teachers' technical competency and/or instructions, the student's ability, the quality of the equipment used, the user-friendliness of the software, and the contribution of the social environment to the learning in a setting which is technologically enhanced. New methodologies to measure the full potential of ICT in the learning process in classrooms where mixed modes of instructions are used need to be developed. In the framework that is proposed in this paper, the mode of learning is almost entirely ICT-based and provides an ideal setting for researching learning with gifted students.

To investigate how gifted students make use of ICT-mediated learning opportunities over an extended period of time, students could keep a personal log of their learning in their own private space by regularly documenting what they have learned, how they have learned it, and problems they have encountered while learning. The students' journals and their interactions with each other and the teacher will be electronically recorded through standard online management systems so that the content and form of the interactions can be analyzed. This type of research is interpretive in approach, seeking to understand the nature of the reflections and interactions of a particular group of learners during their online learning, and exploring how those learners engage with one another in thinking and planning for a collaborative activity (e.g., a peer conference or Web site). There could be both contextualized interpretations of words, such as diagrams and electronic representations of understandings, as well as descriptive analyses of standardized (quantified) measures of approaches to learning and levels of thinking. By taking a discourse-analytic approach to analyzing the ways in which students that have been identified as gifted negotiate the exploration and expression of new ideas; such a study would contribute to the analysis of conceptualization and creativity.

Conclusion

There is still much to resolve regarding the effective use of technology in schools, but the motivational advantage that ICT brings to learning has been documented in many research studies (for example, Dwyer, 1994; Forcheri & Molfino, 2000; Mistier-Jackson & Songer, 2000; Ng & Gunstone, 2002; Pedretti, Mayer-Smith, & Woodrow, 1998; Wallace, 2002). Students are motivated to learn with technology because it gives them ownership and control over their learning in terms of pace and content. While there are a variety of gifted online courses from many tertiary institutions in several countries, the framework that we have proposed for gifted students offers a less-structured, more independent environment where students can pursue, in their own time, tasks designed to develop a domain of interest to a depth that is theoretically unlimited. The framework and processes that we have outlined allow students to develop a wealth of communication and process skills as well as problem solving skills that will enable them to learn and handle problems independently throughout their lives. We believe that the approach outlined can both provide advantages and avoid some of the economic and social/organizational disadvantages of other possible teaching methods for gifted students.

Manuscript submitted June 8, 2005.

Revision accepted May 10, 2006.

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Wan Ng, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in the areas of Science and Technology Education in the School of Educational Studies at La Trobe University, Australia. She also lectures in the area of Gifted Education. Her major research interest lies in the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education at both school and tertiary levels. E-mail: [e-mail]

Howard Nicholas, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Language Education in the School of Educational Studies at La Trobe University, He has special interests in language as a means of integrating curriculum studies and in the potential of technology for promoting wider participation and productive engagement in second language learning. E-mail: [e-mail]