Here is a current list of Keynotes, 6 Hour Professional Learning Experiences, and 1 Hour Sessions that I am presenting. If you do not see what you are looking for, let me know. I like trying new things, and I am always looking for an interesting topic or title. If you have something specific in mind that is not here, ask me about it. I may be able to help.
KEYNOTES
Dare Mighty Things
The youth of today will likely have the opportunity to travel far past the reaches of Earth’s gravity to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, but getting there will not be easy. Instead, it will take individuals with a pioneer spirit fueled by imagination, the ability to collaborate with others, and the willingness to stay focused on solving seemingly impossible tasks over long periods of time. “Dare Mighty Things” takes you behind the scenes at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the landing of InSight on the surface of Mars to learn from NASA scientists and engineers the behaviors and characteristics that made it possible and ways that we can develop these skills within ourselves and our gifted children. The future is now!
From Curious to Creative: Technology and Today’s Gifted Students
A common characteristic of gifted students is a seemingly insatiable curiosity, and thanks to the power of the Internet, the answer to almost any question is only a few clicks away. Today’s gifted students also have unprecedented access to powerful tools designed for creative production and worldwide distribution. As educators how can we tap into students’ interests and purposefully guide them towards meaningful products? Together, we will explore viable options for transforming you and your students from consumers of information to producers of new knowledge.
Geeks Have Inherited The Earth
Geek. Nerd. Dork. Dweeb. All terms that were once derogatory and served to alienate and ridicule highly intelligent individuals who are passionate about specific areas of interest. Today, these have become terms of empowerment to a great number of gifted students and a source of true pride. This session begins by examining the origin and evolution in the portrayal of stereotypes in popular culture while exploring the differences between each of these terms. From there, a collection of online tools and resources for the geeks and nerds in your life are presented. Come and GET YOUR GEEK ON!
How To Create a Culture of Creativity
Gifted education has a long and rich history of championing creative productivity in our students. Yet, many of our gifted students have become stymied by a fear of failure and the proverbial creative block. To overcome these mental roadblocks, this session explores core principles that today’s most innovative businesses and industries are utilizing to overcome the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration and provides practical examples of how we can implement these principles into our gifted programs.
Giftedness. Honestly, it’s NOT for everyone.
Currently in development for Nebraska Association for the Gifted Conference in February 2020.
The 21st Century Is SO Yesterday! Or Why Having 20/20 Vision is Not Nearly Enough
Coming 2020!
The youth of today will likely have the opportunity to travel far past the reaches of Earth’s gravity to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, but getting there will not be easy. Instead, it will take individuals with a pioneer spirit fueled by imagination, the ability to collaborate with others, and the willingness to stay focused on solving seemingly impossible tasks over long periods of time. “Dare Mighty Things” takes you behind the scenes at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the landing of InSight on the surface of Mars to learn from NASA scientists and engineers the behaviors and characteristics that made it possible and ways that we can develop these skills within ourselves and our gifted children. The future is now!
From Curious to Creative: Technology and Today’s Gifted Students
A common characteristic of gifted students is a seemingly insatiable curiosity, and thanks to the power of the Internet, the answer to almost any question is only a few clicks away. Today’s gifted students also have unprecedented access to powerful tools designed for creative production and worldwide distribution. As educators how can we tap into students’ interests and purposefully guide them towards meaningful products? Together, we will explore viable options for transforming you and your students from consumers of information to producers of new knowledge.
Geeks Have Inherited The Earth
Geek. Nerd. Dork. Dweeb. All terms that were once derogatory and served to alienate and ridicule highly intelligent individuals who are passionate about specific areas of interest. Today, these have become terms of empowerment to a great number of gifted students and a source of true pride. This session begins by examining the origin and evolution in the portrayal of stereotypes in popular culture while exploring the differences between each of these terms. From there, a collection of online tools and resources for the geeks and nerds in your life are presented. Come and GET YOUR GEEK ON!
How To Create a Culture of Creativity
Gifted education has a long and rich history of championing creative productivity in our students. Yet, many of our gifted students have become stymied by a fear of failure and the proverbial creative block. To overcome these mental roadblocks, this session explores core principles that today’s most innovative businesses and industries are utilizing to overcome the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration and provides practical examples of how we can implement these principles into our gifted programs.
Giftedness. Honestly, it’s NOT for everyone.
Currently in development for Nebraska Association for the Gifted Conference in February 2020.
The 21st Century Is SO Yesterday! Or Why Having 20/20 Vision is Not Nearly Enough
Coming 2020!
GIFTED 360:
6 HOUR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING EXPERIENCES
Curiosity: Cat Killer or Mother of Invention?
Curiosity is an essential skill for creative success and a trait that gifted students possess in abundance, but a typical classroom often leaves little space for students' questions. While inquisitive children have long been warned that “curiosity killed the cat”, it is precisely that level of incessant wonderment and investigation that fuels creativity and innovation. Together we will explore practical ways for easily integrating student curiosity into daily lessons. You will be provided with a Pandora’s box of intriguing puzzlements to ignite students’ interests and strategies to help propel them towards creative productivity.
Increasing Student Engagement With Choice, Creativity, Complexity, And Curiosity
This interactive session is one part Choose Your Own Adventure and one part professional development, where you are in the driver's seat! Together we will explore a menu of instructional strategies designed to meaningfully engage your students in the learning process. Your choices and interests will guide us through a series of technology infused creativity activities designed to pique and develop students’ curiosity. Regardless of the choices, everyone will leave with access to all of the resources!
Passion, Purpose, and Perseverance
No doubt, you have been told to “find your passion” or even “follow your bliss”, and perhaps you have even gone as far to pass on this allegedly sage advice to your students. Yet in doing so, we may be unknowingly setting them up for failure by sending them on a wild goose chase or in search of buried treasure. Instead of “finding” our passions as if they were lost, research suggests that we should instead be cultivating them from within. During this professional learning experience you will learn a multitude of strategies for overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration.
The Top Secret Insider’s Guide To Giftedness
One of the “great gripes of gifted” is that no one ever explains what giftedness is. Instead, giftedness is kept a big secret. This professional learning experience cracks open the secret vault of giftedness and examines what gifted is and isn’t. Together we explore strategies for talking with kids and their parents about what it means to be gifted. In addition there are research-based and classroom ready activities related to perfectionism, identity development, imposter syndrome, finding your superpower, and multipotentiality.
Teaching Inside Of The Box
As teachers of the gifted we often encourage our students to be creative and think outside of the box, but we are seldom supported in doing so within our schools and classrooms. Instead, we are confronted with ever increasing demands on our time and limited resources, and somehow are expected to continually do more with less. In this professional learning experience, we will create a roadmap of strategies to prioritize what gets piled on our plates and learn to overcome the obstacles and barriers tossed in our in our path. We will transform your content from what you have to teach to engaging experiences that we want to share with our gifted students. Rather than focusing on thinking outside of the box, true creativity in teaching resides inside of the box. Come, let’s go inside!
Utilizing Technology to Promote Creative Productive Giftedness
Today’s technology offers incredible potential to demonstrate creative-productive giftedness, but as a society we have fallen victim to an unhealthy digital diet consuming massive amounts of screentime that often leaves us feeling bloated and unsatisfied. Together we will confront a series of technological challenges and work to transform them into opportunities for creative productivity. Along the way we will examine ways to meaningful integrate a curated collection of tools designed to specifically reduce distractions, track progress toward goals, increase productivity, be more creative, and basically get stuff done.
Curiosity is an essential skill for creative success and a trait that gifted students possess in abundance, but a typical classroom often leaves little space for students' questions. While inquisitive children have long been warned that “curiosity killed the cat”, it is precisely that level of incessant wonderment and investigation that fuels creativity and innovation. Together we will explore practical ways for easily integrating student curiosity into daily lessons. You will be provided with a Pandora’s box of intriguing puzzlements to ignite students’ interests and strategies to help propel them towards creative productivity.
Increasing Student Engagement With Choice, Creativity, Complexity, And Curiosity
This interactive session is one part Choose Your Own Adventure and one part professional development, where you are in the driver's seat! Together we will explore a menu of instructional strategies designed to meaningfully engage your students in the learning process. Your choices and interests will guide us through a series of technology infused creativity activities designed to pique and develop students’ curiosity. Regardless of the choices, everyone will leave with access to all of the resources!
Passion, Purpose, and Perseverance
No doubt, you have been told to “find your passion” or even “follow your bliss”, and perhaps you have even gone as far to pass on this allegedly sage advice to your students. Yet in doing so, we may be unknowingly setting them up for failure by sending them on a wild goose chase or in search of buried treasure. Instead of “finding” our passions as if they were lost, research suggests that we should instead be cultivating them from within. During this professional learning experience you will learn a multitude of strategies for overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration.
The Top Secret Insider’s Guide To Giftedness
One of the “great gripes of gifted” is that no one ever explains what giftedness is. Instead, giftedness is kept a big secret. This professional learning experience cracks open the secret vault of giftedness and examines what gifted is and isn’t. Together we explore strategies for talking with kids and their parents about what it means to be gifted. In addition there are research-based and classroom ready activities related to perfectionism, identity development, imposter syndrome, finding your superpower, and multipotentiality.
Teaching Inside Of The Box
As teachers of the gifted we often encourage our students to be creative and think outside of the box, but we are seldom supported in doing so within our schools and classrooms. Instead, we are confronted with ever increasing demands on our time and limited resources, and somehow are expected to continually do more with less. In this professional learning experience, we will create a roadmap of strategies to prioritize what gets piled on our plates and learn to overcome the obstacles and barriers tossed in our in our path. We will transform your content from what you have to teach to engaging experiences that we want to share with our gifted students. Rather than focusing on thinking outside of the box, true creativity in teaching resides inside of the box. Come, let’s go inside!
Utilizing Technology to Promote Creative Productive Giftedness
Today’s technology offers incredible potential to demonstrate creative-productive giftedness, but as a society we have fallen victim to an unhealthy digital diet consuming massive amounts of screentime that often leaves us feeling bloated and unsatisfied. Together we will confront a series of technological challenges and work to transform them into opportunities for creative productivity. Along the way we will examine ways to meaningful integrate a curated collection of tools designed to specifically reduce distractions, track progress toward goals, increase productivity, be more creative, and basically get stuff done.
1 HOUR SESSIONS
Becoming a Meddler-in-the-Middle
Rather than being a Sage-on-the-Stage or a Guide-on-the-Side teachers of the gifted should strive to become the Meddler-in-the-Middle. Instead of rushing into save students with the right answer, the Meddler-in-the-Middle intentionally creates puzzling situations to stretch gifted students’ thinking. Come experience a collection of activities designed to promote meddling, curiosity, risk-taking, and creativity in you and your students.
Connecting to Their Future: What do you do when they already know?
In 1907, John Dewey warned us of the isolation that students feel in school from their lives outside of school, and yet in 2018 many of our best and brightest students see little connection between their interests and what is being covered in school. To complicate matters even further, gifted students may have already mastered much of the content that we are expected to teach. Rather than focusing on all of the problems, this session focuses on potential solutions for educators to recognize students’ potential and build on strengths to empower today’s youth to go boldly forward into their future.
Differentiating for the Head and the Heart
In development. This session examines the interaction between cognitive and affective domains and provides a framework for designing learning experiences engage gifted students to both think and feel.
Fighting Fake News! Tools and Tactics for Becoming a SUPER Critical Thinker in a Digital Age
In 2006, we first learned that even the brightest students were easily fooled by internet hoaxes like the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. While we tried to laugh this as the folly of misguided youth, a decade later we witnessed the rise of fake news and its impact on the “post-truth” world of 2016 overrun by an ever growing network of social media. To fight for truth, justice, and yes, even the American way, this session presents a collection of superhero themed critical thinking activities designed to empower you and your students conquer the evils of fake news.
From Curious to Creative: Technology and Today’s Gifted Students
A common characteristic of gifted students is a seemingly insatiable curiosity, and thanks to the power of the Internet, the answer to almost any question is only a few clicks away. Today’s gifted students also have unprecedented access to powerful tools designed for creative production and worldwide distribution. As educators how can we tap into students’ interests and purposefully guide them towards meaningful products? Together, we will explore viable options for transforming you and your students from consumers of information to producers of new knowledge.
Stop Writing Lessons / Start Creating Experiences
In development. In traditional lessons, when new content is presented it is done so in isolated chunks of facts and figures that are held in short term memory for the test and quickly forgotten. In contrast, when we experience something we create lasting memories on a visceral level. This session explores ways to transform traditional lessons into memorable experiences.
Superheroes and the Gifted: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Superheroes and the gifted often possess virtues like compassion, altruism, and a sense of justice. Hope for the future relies not on superheroes miraculously saving the day but instead on empowering today’s gifted kids to conquer the problems of tomorrow. This session compares gifted youth to superheroes and examines the type of support necessary for their own hero’s journey.
Tech Tips 4 Defeating Distraction & Promoting Productivity
Today’s technology offers incredible potential to demonstrate creative-productive giftedness, but as a society we have fallen victim to an unhealthy digital diet consuming massive amounts of screentime that often leaves us feeling bloated and unsatisfied. This session demonstrates ways to meaningful integrate a curated collection of tools designed to specifically reduce distractions, set goals, track progress, and get stuff done.
Using the Schoolwide Enrichment Model with Technology
Examine how Renzulli’s Enrichment Triad Model, a guide for developing defensible programs for G/T, benefits from the availability of today’s technology tools and resources. While digital technologies are constantly evolving, effective skills for learning transcend time. SEM:Tech focuses on the processes that support critical thinking, problem solving, decision-making, and communication. Explore how technology can merge with enrichment pedagogy to launch you and your students toward creative productive giftedness.
What’s Your Problem?!?
Gifted students are routinely presented with opportunities to explore topics of interest in settings like Genius-Hour, PBL, or passion-projects. Yet, they are often overwhelmed unless they have developed skills related to problem finding. In this session, we will analyze the question, “What makes a problem real?” and propose pathways for empowering students to meaningfully investigate solutions to their own problems.
60 Tools In 60 Minutes
Traveling at a rate of a tool per minute, this fast-paced and informative session will help bring your technology toolbox up to speed by categorizing and reviewing resources designed to promote creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and productivity in you and your gifted students.
Rather than being a Sage-on-the-Stage or a Guide-on-the-Side teachers of the gifted should strive to become the Meddler-in-the-Middle. Instead of rushing into save students with the right answer, the Meddler-in-the-Middle intentionally creates puzzling situations to stretch gifted students’ thinking. Come experience a collection of activities designed to promote meddling, curiosity, risk-taking, and creativity in you and your students.
Connecting to Their Future: What do you do when they already know?
In 1907, John Dewey warned us of the isolation that students feel in school from their lives outside of school, and yet in 2018 many of our best and brightest students see little connection between their interests and what is being covered in school. To complicate matters even further, gifted students may have already mastered much of the content that we are expected to teach. Rather than focusing on all of the problems, this session focuses on potential solutions for educators to recognize students’ potential and build on strengths to empower today’s youth to go boldly forward into their future.
Differentiating for the Head and the Heart
In development. This session examines the interaction between cognitive and affective domains and provides a framework for designing learning experiences engage gifted students to both think and feel.
Fighting Fake News! Tools and Tactics for Becoming a SUPER Critical Thinker in a Digital Age
In 2006, we first learned that even the brightest students were easily fooled by internet hoaxes like the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. While we tried to laugh this as the folly of misguided youth, a decade later we witnessed the rise of fake news and its impact on the “post-truth” world of 2016 overrun by an ever growing network of social media. To fight for truth, justice, and yes, even the American way, this session presents a collection of superhero themed critical thinking activities designed to empower you and your students conquer the evils of fake news.
From Curious to Creative: Technology and Today’s Gifted Students
A common characteristic of gifted students is a seemingly insatiable curiosity, and thanks to the power of the Internet, the answer to almost any question is only a few clicks away. Today’s gifted students also have unprecedented access to powerful tools designed for creative production and worldwide distribution. As educators how can we tap into students’ interests and purposefully guide them towards meaningful products? Together, we will explore viable options for transforming you and your students from consumers of information to producers of new knowledge.
Stop Writing Lessons / Start Creating Experiences
In development. In traditional lessons, when new content is presented it is done so in isolated chunks of facts and figures that are held in short term memory for the test and quickly forgotten. In contrast, when we experience something we create lasting memories on a visceral level. This session explores ways to transform traditional lessons into memorable experiences.
Superheroes and the Gifted: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Superheroes and the gifted often possess virtues like compassion, altruism, and a sense of justice. Hope for the future relies not on superheroes miraculously saving the day but instead on empowering today’s gifted kids to conquer the problems of tomorrow. This session compares gifted youth to superheroes and examines the type of support necessary for their own hero’s journey.
Tech Tips 4 Defeating Distraction & Promoting Productivity
Today’s technology offers incredible potential to demonstrate creative-productive giftedness, but as a society we have fallen victim to an unhealthy digital diet consuming massive amounts of screentime that often leaves us feeling bloated and unsatisfied. This session demonstrates ways to meaningful integrate a curated collection of tools designed to specifically reduce distractions, set goals, track progress, and get stuff done.
Using the Schoolwide Enrichment Model with Technology
Examine how Renzulli’s Enrichment Triad Model, a guide for developing defensible programs for G/T, benefits from the availability of today’s technology tools and resources. While digital technologies are constantly evolving, effective skills for learning transcend time. SEM:Tech focuses on the processes that support critical thinking, problem solving, decision-making, and communication. Explore how technology can merge with enrichment pedagogy to launch you and your students toward creative productive giftedness.
What’s Your Problem?!?
Gifted students are routinely presented with opportunities to explore topics of interest in settings like Genius-Hour, PBL, or passion-projects. Yet, they are often overwhelmed unless they have developed skills related to problem finding. In this session, we will analyze the question, “What makes a problem real?” and propose pathways for empowering students to meaningfully investigate solutions to their own problems.
60 Tools In 60 Minutes
Traveling at a rate of a tool per minute, this fast-paced and informative session will help bring your technology toolbox up to speed by categorizing and reviewing resources designed to promote creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and productivity in you and your gifted students.
