Keynote: A New View on Education |
Saeed Arida is the founder and Chief Excitement Officer at NuVu Studio. He recently completed a PhD in Design and Computation at the Architecture School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Saeed’s doctoral research focused on teaching creativity and ultimately developed into NuVu. Saeed, along with the NuVu team, has been working for two years to bring his vision of innovative education to reality. Prior to NuVu, he taught graduate architectural design studios at MIT and advised students’ theses projects. His portfolio of products and solutions includes Hugah, an online home exchange service, a limited series MIT Gradrat Ring, and product commercials for LG, Samsung and Microsoft.
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Blocks to Automaticity: a Frequently Overlooked Problem in Gifted Children, 2E or Otherwise. This talk will provide a framework of how this concern can be assessed, an overview of some manifestations, and some suggestions for support and intervention. There will be abundant time for questions. |
Diana Abramo, M.Ed., CAGS is an educational therapist in NYC and Medford, MA. She focuses on helping children (and their parents) identify their neurological preferences, strengths, and weaknesses in learning, then using them to modify and prioritize a learning program. She holds an M.Ed. degree from Harvard's program in Mind, Brain and Education (advisor: Howard Gardner) and a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Gifted Children with Learning Disabilities with Dr. Susan Baum. She completed Dr. Mel Levine's Schools Attuned professional training course; all the course work for a Ph.D. in Community Psychology with a research minor; and has studied at the National Center for the Study of Gifted and Talented Children. Her prior professional work included counseling, research, and program development. She is the mother of two gifted children, one in a gifted school, and another whom she has homeschooled for the last 13 years. |
Neural Plasticity: How Brains Change
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Liz Adams is a first-year PhD student in neuroscience at Brown University. She recently received an Honorable Mention from the National Science Foundation's 2011 Graduate Research Fellowship Competition, and (finally!) finished her bachelor's degree last year, graduating cum laude from Harvard in May, 2010. Liz has been interested in neural plasticity since the mid-1980's; after 8 years in professional theatre and 10 years in local politics, she is delighted to be working in neuroscience now. She and her three children are in their 7th year of homeschooling. |
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Stephen R. Balzac is the president of 7 Steps Ahead, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in increasing individual, team, and organizational performance. Steve serves on the boards of the New England Society of Applied Psychology (NESAP) and the Society of Professional Consultants (SPC). Steve is a member of the Operations Committee of the American Judo & Jujitsu Federation. No stranger to the challenges of achieving peak performance under competitive and stressful conditions, he holds a fourth degree black belt in jujitsu and is a former nationally ranked competitive fencer. He has published numerous articles on the application of sport psychology techniques to martial arts training. |
Practical Paper Folding (C) |
Hana Bochicchio (with Janna Fox) is a student at Bay State College, majoring in early childhood education. She has previously studied art education at the Art Institute of Boston.
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Underachievement: Understanding Motivational Paralysis |
Anna Caveney is an education consultant. She has designed and implemented individualized curricula for homeschooling teenagers, developed a theory of the emotional foundations of underachievement and led workshops addressing the challenges and joys of being highly gifted. She has created and taught classes in calculus, thinking skills and peer counseling. She runs the Young Adult program at BIQ.
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Improvisation Games (C) |
Arika Cohen is absurdly delighted to be teaching and learning again at Beyond I.Q.! Arika spends her days in Jamaica Plain, MA, smooshing Play-Doh into her hair and making mud pies with the infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged kiddos at Horizons for Homeless Children. Her past gigs include teaching Lower, Middle, and Upper School Drama, designing costumes for children’s theatres, and, in general, making a great deal of mess and noise. |
Practical Paper Folding (C) |
Janna Fox has been folding paper since someone showed her how to make the paper cup in Kindergarden. Since then, she has helped make a thousand paper cranes (for luck), organized her closet with paper boxes, and generally kept herself out of a great deal of trouble my keeping her hands busy with paper. Previously she has taught water safety, orienteering, basic cooking skills,and a number of other skills to groups of up to 200 of her closest Girl Scout friends. |
MBTI The Sequel Done the basic MBTI session. Hungry for more? This session is for you! You'll learn about the most interesting (and my favorite) part of type: type dynamics and development. You'll learn about the two different kinds of sensing, intuiting, thinking, and feeling and why that matters. We'll figure out which ones apply to your time and share stories about how that manifests. This session will also help people with unclear preferences figure out their MBTI type. And, if we have time, we'll also briefly discuss the types of MBTI tests and their competitors. Looking forward to continuing the same fun sessions from last year! (We'll start approximately where we left off last April.) |
Karen Frost is a personal coach and organizational development consultant, orchestral flutist, jewelry designer, and the mom of a PG college student. She started out as a professional flutist, then spent 20+ years consulting with large corporations such as American Express, Amoco, CNA, Coach Leathergoods, GTE, Manpower, Miller Brewing, and many others. She now focuses more on individuals and less on organizations, specializing in coaching executive women, entrepreneurs, and adults with ADD. She also facilitates classes and sessions for parents of highly gifted kids. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Flute Performance from Vanderbilt University. Except for that $*#@ thesis, she has completed her Masters in Psychology with emphasis in Organizational Psychology and Assessment from National-Louis University. She serves on the board as Artistic VP of the Skokie Valley Symphony and is Membership Co-Chair ChAPT-Chicago Association for Psychological Type. |
Conversation on Current Events (C) |
Pete Gast has been involved in gifted education since he attended the Illinois Math and Science Academy for high school. He is a math geek, a computer programmer, an avid fan of role-playing games, a tutor, and a consultant, all of which makes him about half a Josh, which is about of a third of Josh past his wildest expectations. |
Marketing Self-Defense Workshop (C) |
Katy Hamilton was once a gifted child, but that was a long time ago. She has since moved on to instructional design in technology and robotics while writing, cooking and learning Chinese on the side. She holds a B.A. in Theater and a Master's Degree in Library and Information Studies.
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The Heart of the Problem: accessing your intuitive world with Heart Rhythm Meditation |
John Kroeker is a teacher of meditation and a board member of the Institute for Applied Meditation, which is dedicated to bringing traditional meditation techniques into modern daily life. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University and is currently Chief Technology Officer for Eliza Corporation. |
Introduction to Linguistics(C) |
Raisa Lardie writes: "I am a junior in Hofstra University's Honors College, pursuing a double major in anthropology and linguistics, with a minor in Japanese. Next year I will be writing two honors thesises: my linguistics thesis on how American culture is influencing the Japanese language; and my anthropology thesis on the ways in which Siberian shamanic practices and animism form the basis for Russian folklore and mythology. |
Multi-Media Art (C) |
Susan Eiseman Levitin comes to BIQ from a long background of art and education. This is her third year attending and presenting. Currently, she homeschools her 8, 10 and 14 year olds, and is an active member of a number of homeschooled communities. |
The Doubly Exceptional Child, Adolescent, & Adult in Psychotherapy |
Erick Medina Psy.D. is a graduate of Georgetown University, where he majored in philosophy, and Rutgers University, where he obtained his doctorate in clinical psychology. He did post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Vanguard, and at the Integrated Center for Child Development in Canton, MA, and has taught at the high school as well as college level. He currently does psychotherapeutic as well as neuropsychological work with children, adolescents, and adults, and also works with couples and groups.
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A Lexicon Village Adventure in Words & Numbers (C) |
Dr. Pendred (Penny) Noyce is a physician, education reformer, and author. She was educated at Harvard University and Stanford University School of Medicine, and she did her residency in internal medicine at the University of Minnesota Hospitals. After residency, she moved to Massachusetts and worked first at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center and later at Newton-Wellesley Hospital |
Problem Solving |
Richard Rusczyk founded Art of Problem Solving in 2003 to create interactive educational opportunities for avid math students. Richard Rusczyk is one of the co-authors of the Art of Problem Solving classic textbooks, author of Art of Problem Solving's Introduction to Algebra, Introduction to Geometry, and Precalculus textbooks, co-author of Art of Problem Solving's Intermediate Algebra, one of the co-creators of the Mandelbrot Competition, and a past Director of the USA Mathematical Talent Search. He was a participant in National MATHCOUNTS, a three-time participant in the Math Olympiad Summer Program, and a USA Mathematical Olympiad winner (1989). He graduated from Princeton University in 1993, and worked as a bond trader for D.E. Shaw & Company for four years. AoPS marks Richard's return to his vocation - educating motivated students. |
What I Learned From My Gifted Education Project (And other high school sitcom titles that will never see the light.) Vocab terms |
Anna Secino is a high school Senior whose training in gifted education includes four years at a school with no gifted education. She has spent the past eight months nurturing her research project (aptly titled “Gifted Education in Public High School”), and looks forward to studying educational ethics and bell curve extremes (and illustration and languages and very long books) at college. |
Zome Tools Building Workshop (C) |
Connor Shea lives in a quiet area of Connecticut with his brother, 2 sisters, parents, and 4 cats. He runs a blog about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) at www.Stem4Kids.info. The STEM4Kids mission is to promote the study of STEM to kids of all ages. |
Gifted Children in Literature (C) |
Lorel Shea is geeky enough to admit that she met her husband in Mensa and that they have two boys named after sci-fi characters and two girls named after literary characters. She lives with her husband and kids in Connecticut's “quiet corner” where she presides as headmistress of Shea Academy. |
Dabrowski Q & A |
Josh Shaine is a migrant teacher, working for homeschool families, public and private schools, and whatever else comes down the pike. He works predominantly with gifted children, with a focus on underachievers and hg/pg issues. He is also slowly researching non-linear thinking styles. |
Games Development (C) |
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Catapult Launch |
Sean Stevens Since Sean was six years old, he has always taken things apart to see how they worked. This innate curiosity about how things work lead him to explore computer programming, human perception, robotics, alternative energy, Sound, lighting, LASERs, Interactivity, the internet, and how it can all tie into community. He discovered that most complex systems can be considered to be made of modules. With the right input and output, these modules can be made to act independently. |
Necessary Failures This talk is part of my ongoing project documenting normal psychological development in the intellectually gifted population. We will focus on the necessary limits and boundaries that one must experience in order to develop a cohesive and resilient personality. We will address the following questions: How is psychological development impacted by extraordinary intellectual ability? How does asynchronous cognitive development affect emotional and psychological development? How can we, as parents and teachers, facilitate normative developmental crises for highly gifted children in ways that are constructive and produce a positive, realistic sense of self? I will present some of my thinking and some case material. Workshop participants will be asked to provide examples of their own and we will think together about strategies for facilitating health development as well as providing good primary prevention of emotional and psychological difficulties in the children with whom we live and work. |
Melinda Stewart Currently the Director of Counseling at Groton School in Groton, MA, Ms. Stewart has worked with gifted children and adolescents in a variety of settings over the last 28 years. She is the founder and former director of Voyagers, Inc., and has been on the staffs of the Stone Center at Wellesley College and McLean Hospital. She is the mother of two PG children, one currently in college and one currently homeschooled.
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Free Style Costuming & Art (C) |
Persis Thorndike has been running Children's programming at science fiction conventions, home schooling, and gifted and talented conferences for the past 6 years, and has assisted in the activities room at the New England Folk Festival for over 10 years. Mother of a home-schooled 12-year-old, Persis draws from a broad range of interests to plan captivating and entertaining children's activities to keep kids in the 6-12 age range happy and occupied at conferences and conventions. |
Attention! Some Informed Speculation about the Underpinnings of AD(H)D |
Eric Van entered Harvard in 1972 as one of future Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow's particle physics tutees and graduated in 1978 as one of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop's students. He has spent the last six years back at Harvard, as a Special Student affiliated with the Graduate Department of Psychology, taking 20 undergraduate courses in the field in preparation for an eventual Ph.D. He lives in Watertown, Mass. |
Games Development (C) |
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Catapult Launch |
David Wang is a PhD student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) at MIT, where his current research focuses on planning for autonomous systems. The goal of which is to be able to command a system via high level commands such as goals it must accomplish and have the system determine the appropriate course of action. For his masters, he studied techniques for improving software-reliability. Outside of work, he pursues a wide variety of interests, from building robots and planes to teaching. He was an organizer for the 6.270, Lego Robotics Competition for 3 years, and helped teach a variety of computers, programming, and algorithm courses over 5 years. He holds degrees in Aeronautics/Astronautics and Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from MIT. |
Executive Functioning: Everyday Problem-Solving |
Aimee Yermish, Psy.D. is an educational therapist specializing in work with children who are gifted, learning-disabled, or twice-exceptional, providing assessment, enrichment, remediation, mentoring, individualized program development, and parent and teacher guidance. She draws upon her analytical background as a research scientist and her practical background as a classroom teacher in order to create individualized strategies for each child. (aimee@davincilearning.org) |
Memory Mapping as an Art Project (C) |
Danette Zeh is a 2nd-generation BIQ attendee. In past lives she's been an gifted kid, an artist and at one point ended up with a degree in comparative religion and social justice. She currently spends her time in northern Virginia chasing two extremely precocious wee ones which may end up in a study on ways to defeat child proofing. In her spare time she helps run a co-op preschool for 2-4 year olds (http://buildingblocksco-op.blogspot.com/).
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