Monthly Archives: August 2011

Twitter Bird wedding album 2

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Retweet and her matron of honour, bridesmaids and little flowergirl.

 

Tweet and his groomsmen.

The flowers – headpieces and bouquets for bride and maids, headpiece and basket of scattering flowers for flowergirl, corsages for mothers of bride and groom, button hole flowers for groom, groomsmen and fathers of bride and groom, top hats for groomsmen,  floral heart arrangements for lobby decoration

 

The Bridal party

Parents of Tweet and Retweet (Retweet’s mum brought a box of tissues) and Great Aunt Hashtag

Some explanation needed

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I realised yesterday, while referring a parent of a gifted youngster to Sprite’s Site blog in connection to illustrations of some of the social/emotional aspects of giftedness, that unless you had been a regular reader of Sprite’s Site blog it may not make much sense and you would be wondering who all these assorted animals were!

I do have a blog page explaining who Sprite is About Sprite https://spritessite.wordpress.com/about-2/

and also a page on my personal website at http://www.giftedresources.org/jo/sprite.htm

And I have given reintroductions to the characters in blog posts last November which I still link to within blog posts.
But it seemed that it would make things much easier to provide a glossary page and I am working on that now.

As a starter here are Eidetic the Memory Elephant, the Dabrowski Dogs and the Black Dogs

Eidetic the Memory Elephant (No 14in the picture) is Sprite’s imaginary friend who is a personification of memory and the Visual Spatial Learner’s style of thinking. You can see an animation of the Memory Elephant in action at https://spritessite.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/memory-elephant-usb-morph/

The Dabrowski Dogs
The Dabrowski dogs are personifications of the characteristics described by Dabrowski’s Over-excitabilities. Stephanie Tolan has written an excellent Layman’s Explanation to Dabrowski’s Over-excitabilities at http://www.stephanietolan.com/dabrowskis.htm

You can read about them in the Youblisher booklet Sprite and the Dabrowski Dogs at http://www.youblisher.com/p/11810-Sprite-and-the-Dabrowski-dogs/

  1. Intellectual, the Border collie, loves learning and academia. He is quite pedantic and insistent on verifying the accuracy of facts and citing sources correctly. He loves puzzles and word games. He learns rapidly and thinks deeply and critically. He loves to debate issues and his intellect can be intimidating at times.
  2. Sensual (who has the nickname Itchy) is stimulated by sights, sounds, tastes and textures. This can be good or bad – when the effects are negative Sensual can be part of the Black Dogs group.
  3. Imaginational, the Bedlington terrier, participates in a vivid imaginary world where he is a lamb or floats around in a hot air balloon. Imaginational likes to imagine a utopian future and is therefore a useful member of problem solving teams
  4. Emotional, the English Springer spaniel, experiences the extremes of happiness and despair. Her emotions are complex –she can be moved to tears by music. She has a heightened sense of justice and an empathy with others which can cause pain for her.
  5. Psycho Motor is very active both mentally and physically. He is always bouncing and barking and chasing his tail. Some people claim he has ADHD and others say he is just very active! Although he does not appear to be paying attention he can usually give the right answer.

The Back Dogs
The Black dogs are the personifications of possible causes of depression in gifted people.
Read all about the Black dogs in the Youblisher booklet Sprite and Black Dog http://www.youblisher.com/p/10553-Sprite-and-Black-Dog/

6. SAD Seasonally Affected Black dog feels depressed when the weather is wintry and the skies are grey

7. Leaping Attack Black dog – Sprite was never sure what caused Leaping Attack Black dog to make her feel depressed but one helpful strategy was to HALT and check  Are you Healthy/Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired as any of these things could contribute to feelings of depression

8. Wistful Black dog is often found near the Memory Elephant wishing that things could have been better in the past. Wistful is the counterpoise of Imaginational who envisages a better future

9. Thinks-he’s –an-alien Black dog feels isolated and as if he is different from everyone else. Imaginational Dabrowski is always keen to use imagination, creativity and humour to help Thinks-he’s-an-alien feel included

10. Guard on Duty Black dog often prevents Sprite from doing things by suggesting that it is too dangerous or that she will not be able to do it.
Guard on Duty Black dog can be both positive and negative. Sometimes he is acting as a protector but at other times he is causing anxiety which results in her not participating because of fear of failure

11. Little Bully Black dog can change from playing nicely to acting like a bully. Psycho Motor Dabrowski often plays with Little Bully Black dog to prevent him from becoming bored and teaches him social skills

There are two more dogs which are neither Black dogs nor Dabrowski dogs

12. P’est Pour Parfait, the Perfectionist poodle  is the personification of the gifted perfectionist tendency He goes to the grooming parlour looking immaculate, with not a hair out of place, having already spent the morning in a grooming parlour; so that he would be in a respectable condition to be groomed!

13. Pugnacious Loyola is a little fawn pug who is a good friend and loyal companion for Sprite
“I can always depend on him to be there when I want company or support and he makes funny faces at me and makes me laugh!” said Sprite. “And he is not as demanding as the Dabrowski dogs and he doesn’t make me feel sad or bad like the Black dogs do.”

Outdoor cinema for #gtstoogies Week 3

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This week the #gtstoogies Outdoor Cinema will the screening The Return of the King, the third and final film in the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The Memory Elephant, the Dabrowski Dogs and the Twitter Birds will be going to the pictures as well as to the #RSCON3 Reflections Party http://reformsymposium.com/conferences/rscon3/rscon3-reflections-party/

Emotional Dabrowski loves all the beautiful New Zealand scenery in the films especially all the scenes in the Hobbit holes at Bagend and she takes a roller coaster ride of emotions every time she watches the films.
Intellectual Dabrowski is being a bit tedious and delivering a lengthy lecture about the geography of New Zealand to a visiting kiwi  who fortunately is quite good natured and humours him.

One Twitter Bird who has been busy for the last couple of weeks drawing smiley emoticons on white boards thought he was supposed to draw a smiley on the screen until people started calling out “Sit down in the front!”

The Pre-Post Party Party

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There will be a Reflections Party for #RSCON3 Reform Symposium this weekend. The invitation and all the details can be found at http://reformsymposium.com/conferences/rscon3/rscon3-reflections-party/

Sprite, the Memory Elephant, the Dabrowski Dogs and the Twitter Birds are having a Pre-Post Party Party to make sure they have their party hats on and all their reflections collected.  They have brought out the  Take Away from RSCON3 screen capture slide so that they can sign it to express their thanks to the organizers, presenters and moderators.

RSCON3 Looking at the Links 4: Websites mentioned at RSCON3 (Cont.)

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The Twitter Birds are certainly very generous and very efficient when it comes to sharing links to interesting websites.
They have been working overtime since RSCON3

Here are some more of the website links that were mentioned during the Reform Symposium.

Learning Management Systems

Instructure Canvas
http://www.instructure.com/

Learning score
http://www.learningscore.com/

Mathematics

Colin T Graham LiveBinder
Mathematics and Art – best of MATES
http://livebinders.com/play/play/147087

Photo and image editing

Picnik
http://www.picnik.com/

Word Chef
http://www.imagechef.com/

QR Codes

QR Codes
http://web20classroom.blogspot.com/2010/12/qr-huh-what-heck-is-qr-code.html

Splash URL
http://splashurl.net/

Schools

Dreams of Education How a blog started a school
http://dreamsofeducation.wordpress.com/

Screenshots and screencasts

Jing
http://www.techsmith.com/jing/

Service Projects and challenges

Design for change challenge
http://www.dfcworld.com/

Social Media and Networks

Classroom Chronicles Change is on the way
http://www.classroomchronicles.net/2011/08/02/rscon3-my-final-word/

Google Plus
http://prezi.com/fnolpkoe_-sl/google-social-network/

Tweetchat
http://tweetchat.com

A world of Tweets
http://aworldoftweets.frogdesign.com/

Story writing programs
Storyrobe
http://www.storyrobe.com/storyrobe/Home.html

Teach Meets
Teach Meet Melbourne
http://teachmeetmelbourne.wikispaces.com/

Techie Brekkie
http://www.techiebrekkie.net/

Textbooks (Digital)

Ian Chia’s Diigo Textbooks wishlist
http://www.diigo.com/list/ianchia/textbook-wishlist

 Word clouds
Wordle
http://www.wordle.net/

Taxedo
http://www.tagxedo.com/