Gifted Sample Email #1

-----Original Message-----

Sent: Friday, March 19, 2004 3:38 PM

To: OURGIFTED-L@neiu.edu

Subject: ASAT: ADMIN - WELCOME

Dear List Members,

I would like to welcome the list members and the guest experts - Barbara J. Gilman and Kathi Kearney to Our Gifted Online Conferences. A place to join together to meet, share, learn, and discuss issues pertaining to giftedness and talent of all individuals regardless of race, age, gender, economic status, and/or twice/thrice exceptionalities.

The title and short description of the conference is Assessment and Testing: What about the SB5, WISC-IV, and Other Tests? This conference will explore some of the issues surrounding assessment of gifted children. When is assessment appropriate? Who should assess gifted children? What instruments are most commonly used, and why? What is the impact of new assessment instruments and new revisions on the identification of gifted children? What information can be gained from a full evaluation, and how can this information most effectively be used in both the classroom and at home?

Our guest experts' bios are as follows:

Barbara Gilman, M.S., specializes in the assessment of gifted children, the creation of educational programs to motivate them, and helping parents and teachers to support their academic, social, and emotional needs. The Director of Staff Development at the Gifted Development Center in Denver, she has degrees in Psychology and Child Development, trains testers in the unique issues of the gifted, and supervises reports. Bobbie has extensive experience working with the gifted, highly gifted, gifted individuals with learning disabilities, AD/HD, and underachievement issues. A mother of profoundly gifted sons, she is a veteran of gifted committees and helped create an accelerated charter middle school. Bobbie is a popular presenter to parent groups and teachers, and consults with parents worldwide.Her new book, Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational Advocacy that works, addresses the many questions parents ask about gifted advocacy.

Kathi Kearney, M.A. Ed., currently teaches gifted students at the Noble VI School in Berwick, ME and is also a Professional Associate with the Gifted Development Center in Denver, CO. She is the founder of the Hollingworth Center for Highly Gifted Children, a national resource and support network for exceptionally gifted children and their families. She was an instructor in talented and gifted education at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa for two years. Kathi has worked with children as a teacher and administrator in a wide variety of settings, urban and rural, in public, private, religious, and home schools. She is the Past Chair of the Conceptual Foundations Division of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), and has contributed scholarly journal articles on such topics as assessment, the highly gifted child, rural and distance learning, minority groups in gifted education, and Leta Hollingworths work on children with IQ scores above 180. Her most recent res earch project involved conducting validation studies of the new Stanford Binet Fifth Edition for Riverside Publishing.

This conference will be moderated, therefore please be patient if the emails are a bit slower to appear on the list:)

Please wait to read the guest experts' OPENING STATEMENTS, before posting to the conference on Our Gifted Online Conferences -

Assessment and Testing: What about the SB5, WISC-IV, and Other Tests?

Welcome everyone!!!

Kindest regards,

Sally_L

Conference Coordinator

List Manager

Dear List Members:

MOST IMPORTANTLY remember the ground rules:))))

GROUND RULES

"ground rules" for this conference. . .and

that goes, even if the info about item content is located somewhere else on the internet, it CANNOT be posted on the list.

Many times, parents add in "anecdotes" about specific things that their child did on the tests (perhaps overhearing a test question, or being in the room when a young child took the test).

We need to make it VERY clear *we* cannot give out any information on specific items, NOR SHOULD THE POSTERS!

Under test ethics we CANNOT discuss the content of individual items/subtests, nor should posters offer such info on the lists, in order to protect test security. Any list member(s) doing such, intentionally or unintentionally, will be immediately deleted from the list membership!!!

Kathi and Bobbie the list is now ready and the list members will wait until they hear from you both before posting.

Sally_L

Conference Coordinator

List Manager

Hi List Members,

The Opening Statement is available to also read on the website

It is the "pretty" version:) and error free

Thanks,

Sally_L