Blocks to Automaticity: a Frequently Overlooked Problem in Gifted Children, 2E or Otherwise.
Cognitive and perceptual automaticity refers to the ability to take in information, process it, and express the learning-- and to do this effortlessly and automatically. In her educational therapy practice, Diana frequently sees gifted children whose unexplained learning difficulties lie in this area: as gifted kids, they learn the material and test well, but it takes them more effort than it would otherwise. This creates difficulties as academic expectations simultaneously increase in rate, volume and complexity at various academic levels. This problem is seldom identified in the literature.

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
Brains change throughout life.  This presentation will start with a brief introduction and overview of the brain's structure and the structure and characteristics of neurons and synapses.  We'll then dive deeply into known cellular mechanisms of neural plasticity, known macro-scale effects of environment on plasticity, and finish with a discussion of critical periods (developmental stages after which change is extremely difficult).

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.
Steve has bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and engineering from MIT, and a master's degree in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology, with a focus on motivation, performance, and group dynamics, from Capella University. He has spoken at several conferences and appeared on panels on computer game design. His articles have appeared in Metagame, The Journal of Interactive Drama, The IBM Systems Journal, The Lincoln Journal, Mass High Tech, The Kiai Echo, and the Worcester Business Journal.

Practical Paper Folding (C)
Learn to make a variety of useful and attractive things from paper; may include cups, boxes, envelopes, secret notes, jumping frogs, stars, and others.

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.

Underachievement: Understanding Motivational Paralysis
"Have you done your homework?" Parents and teachers resent being forced to act the role of enforcer almost as much as children hate requiring it, especially when the child seems unable to pursue even enjoyable activities. This malaise mystifies adults who worked to create opportunities for a child who seems perversely determined to be miserable. Traditional advice such as "be firm with them" or "it's just a phase" are not helpful. Analysis will compare a healthy motivational system and common forms of motivational paralysis. Discussion will focus on supporting development of long-term healthy motivation and disarming self-sabotaging habits.

A Best Friend and the Perfect School: Lessons Learned from a Childhood Quest
As the youngest of three children, I was identified as profoundly gifted long before I reached school age.  My mother was told the "bad" news that school would have nothing appropriate for me.  Like most parents, she knew it was her task to find the right school for me, but what do you do when all your options are bad?  When, through no fault of your own, you are set up to fail at one of the fundamental responsibilities of parenting, what can you do?  In this session, we will discuss the "perfect school" and "best friend" quests, and what mom and I would tell our younger selves if we could.

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.

Improvisation Games (C)
Play some games that are guaranteed to make you think fast and crack up!  Improvisation is the art of acting without a script, and the only limit is your own imagination.  The improv games we’ll be playing are designed to make you (and your audience) laugh out loud.  We’ll also prove that necessity really is the mother of invention; you’ll be amazed by what you can come up with.

Trapped in Haunted Mansion! (C)
Who turned off the lights? Why won’t the telephone work? What was that noise??? In this game of make-believe, it’s a dark and stormy night, and you’re starting to suspect that something eerie is going on. What manner of creature haunts the mansion, and what is its intent? And will everyone make it out alive? That’s entirely up to you.

We’re Going On A Quest! (C)
Searching for the Shining Purple Crystal of Fire and Water? Hunting for a vial of super-poisonous Doomsnake venom?  Whatever you’re looking for, finding it is not going to be easy undefined especially when everyone you meet on your journey tries to make your task even more difficult! But don’t worry undefined by the end, you’ll find what you’re looking for!

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)
Learn to make a variety of useful and attractive things from paper; may include cups, boxes, envelopes, secret notes, jumping frogs, stars, and others.

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)
What do you know about what’s going on around us?  Tsunami’s, Egypt, Libya, Ivory Coast,  budget talks… let’s get involved in the news of the world.

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)
Through discussion and questioning we will explore several advertisements and the tactics they use to influence our thoughts and feelings. We will learn about manipulation as a tool and debate the responsibilities – if there are any? – that come with wielding it. Vocabulary words
Manipulate (v): To influence, manage, direct, control or tamper with something.
Market (v): To make (products or services) available for sale and promote them.
Suggested Reading:  The First Honest Book About Lies By Jonni Kincher (ISBN 0915793431)

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.

The Heart of the Problem: accessing your intuitive world with Heart Rhythm Meditation
Where does inspiration come from? An experiential workshop will introduce some simple breath techniques. By bringing the breath and heartbeat into harmony, we lower our noise level so we can really hear our “heart’s desire”, our purpose. We will use the technique to see what answers come to some personal and global question.
An interesting exercise is to think of phrases that have the word “heart” in them, for example, we say “follow your heart”. What does that really mean? The meditation techniques that we will try are described more fully in the book Living From the Heart by Puran and Susanna Bair (available at Amazon).

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. 
After many years of intensity in science, technology, and health-care innovation, he is interested in helping people balance an active mental life with a heart-centered awareness

Introduction to Linguistics(C)
A brief introduction to the world of linguistics, this workshop is designed to get people to think about something many of us take for granted: language, its sounds, construction, meaning, and uses. Participants will have opportunities to work through various linguistic puzzles dealing with phonology, morphology, and syntax

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.
Outside of school, my interests include traditional archery, color guard, gaming, foreign language acquisition, anime/manga, and a host of other topics too numerous to list here. (I've also recently become interested in world politics--woe is me!) I am currently in the process of writing my first novel."

Multi-Media Art (C)
Come see how artists work with a variety of non-traditional ways. Then take a crack at it yourself with a wide variety of materials.
Weaving (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.

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.

A Lexicon Village Adventure in Words & Numbers (C)
A Lexicon Village Adventure: Challenge yourself with tricky language and mathematics!  Visit ten stations representing villages from the fantasy novel Lost in Lexicon: an Adventure in Words and Numbers.  Visitors will wrestle with metaphor, pi, mirror mazes, word roots, Tangrams, poetry, and more as they seek the lost children of Lexicon.
Visitors to Lexicon will have more fun if they have read Lost in Lexicon by Pendred Noyce before attending.  Students may also enjoy The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
Suggested vocabulary words:
Metaphor: a word or phrase used to represent an unlike thing by pointing out a resemblance: “She is a rose among women.”
Simile: an explicit comparison between two unlike things or concepts, using “like” or “as”: “He sang like a cat in pain.”
Meter: (1) a linear measure of a little more than three feet; (2) a repeating pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse
Pi: the constant ration between the circumference and diameter of a circle
Neologism: a new word, often created by combining two or more words.

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 
Penny serves on the boards of multiple non-profits, including the Noyce Foundation, which focuses on mathematics and science education, and the Libra Foundation, which supports economic growth and the well-being of children in Maine. Penny has co-led a number of National Science foundation initiatives and has been active in promoting informed education policy discussions in Massachusetts.  Married with five children and no longer practicing medicine, she has returned to an old love, writing fiction.  Her children’s novel Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers was published by Tumblehome Press in October, 2010 and acquired by Scarletta Press in January, 2011.

Problem Solving
Richard will speak on the importance of problem-solving, and how to prepare high-performing math students for the challenges they will face in the future.

Problem Solving (C)
Richard Rusczyk spent four years as a trader prior to starting Art of Problem Solving.  In this talk, we'll discuss some of the key math concepts that are needed to understand markets.

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.)
What is it like to be an ex-homeschooler researching gifted programs in a gifted program-less public school?  As it turns out, more rewarding than the rest of my high school classes combined.  I’ll be talking about my project findings, the hypothetical future gifted program at my school, and the plight of high-achieving students from a student’s perspective.  Questions and discussion are welcome.

Vocab terms
Twice-exceptional: Gifted students with learning disabilities.
Motivational paralysis: Term developed by educational consultant Anna Caveney; a type of “self-sabotage” defined by unhealthy perfectionism, risk avoidance, and an identity based precariously on academic achievement.
The Matthew Effect: A social theory which states that success will lead to further success, while failure will lead to further failure.  In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell refers to the Matthew Effect in his argument against gifted education.
The Lake Wobegon Effect: Yet another social theory describing a classroom situation where lowered standards and heightened praise have lead to all the children being above-average.

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)
We will explore engineering and geometry with Zometools Engineering kits, with a specific focus on Biotechnology.  Kids are encouraged to participate regardless of any previous experience with Zome. We will be using premade Zometool kits of Molecular Mania, Animal Virus, and DNA.  These kits are designed to build specific models from different areas of science, such as a DNA helix, an Ammonia molecule, or a single virus.  We can do some free building with extra kits if we have time.

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)
Readers of all ages are welcome to join us for an energizing, interactive discussion of gifted children in literature.  Books we might discuss include A Wrinkle in Time, Chasing Vermeer, A Mango Shaped Space, Millicent Min-Girl Genius, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Matilda, among others. 

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
You've been hearing about this theory, but you don't quite get it - how the different pieces fit.
Or you are quite familiar with it, but there are certain parts that just aren't making sense.
I will try to answer your questions and prompt new ones!

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)

Tim Stellmach

Catapult Launch
Students will be competing to design the best and farthest throwing catapult from a limited amount of materials.  A catapult is a device used to throw or hurl a projectile a great distance.  Working in teams and within a certain amount of time, students will design and build a mini-catapult and test it's capacity to hurl a ball past a given distance.

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.

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.

Free Style Costuming & Art (C)
Use your imagination, create a costume from our vast collection of art supplies, fabrics, ribbons and trim, make some yarn hair falls to top everything off, or, take your artistic talents and draw, cut and glue to your heart’s content.

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.
Children's programs designed and overseen: ConCertino 1999, 2003, 2006 Noreascon 4, 2004 (World Science Fiction Convention) Arisia 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Boskone 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Learning In Our Own Way home schooling conference, August 2005 Beyond IQ conference May 2006, April 2007, May 2008.
Assisted with: Torcon 3, 2003 (World Science Fiction Convention) Beyond IQ conference May 2004 NEFFA children's activities room, 1996-2006 Maryland Fairy Festival May 2005, May 2006 LA Con IV, September 2006.

Attention!  Some Informed Speculation about the Underpinnings of AD(H)D
How does the brain decide what to pay attention to?  What are the causes of absent-mindedness?  Informed by contemporary neuroscience, Van will build a model for the brain’s attention-selection and switching mechanism from the ground up, and then explore how defects in this proposed mechanism (and its underlying neurochemistry) could lead to various flavors of AD(H)D.  As usual, his speculation will be informed by his own experiences with the symptoms involved (as side effects of his sleep disorder), and discussion of attendees’ experiences will be more than encouraged.

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)

Sara Verelli

Catapult Launch
Students will be competing to design the best and farthest throwing catapult from a limited amount of materials.  A catapult is a device used to throw or hurl a projectile a great distance.  Working in teams and within a certain amount of time, students will design and build a mini-catapult and test it's capacity to hurl a ball past a given distance.

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
"If you're so smart, how can you be so...?" We hear this a lot, with our brilliant-but-also- absentminded, moody, overcommitted, stubborn, distractible, intense, slowpoke, self-sabotaging, insomniac, stormy, dingbat, fill-in-the-blank, kids. And spouses. And other family members. And selves. Whether formally diagnosable or just within the broad range of normal, it's quite common for gifted folks to struggle to self-regulate in some aspects of thought, feeling, action, or relationship. But remember, we are all always works-in-progress.In this interactive seminar, I will present some of the principles and techniques by which we can understand the specific nature of each person's problems, explore possible solutions, put our strategies to the test, and coach each other through the process of creating durable change. As time permits, we can workshop individual challenges that audience members face.

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)
Maps have a special importance throughout human history, illustrating a spacial relationship between humans and nature at a specific moment in time. While most map makers focus on 'hard data' such as topography, statistics, or boundaries, artists have been exploring memory mapping as a connection between one's individual experience and a time or place. We'll discuss briefly the use of Memory Mapping as an artistic tool and then use multi-media to create an memory map of our own.

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/).