Creative use of Digital Technologies Provides Opportunities for Rural Gifted Students

Abstract

An academically selective virtual high school in western New South Wales, Australia is providing opportunities for gifted students never before available. Students attend their local public high school and complete courses such as music, physical education, art and applied technologies with their local cohort. English, mathematics and science however are completed in a blended learning environment where students and teachers from an area covering some 385 000 km² meet online using web conferencing software to engage in real time, and then further material is placed in an online learning repository (Moodle) for access by students at any time. This mix of synchronous and asynchronous learning with a cohort of like minds is improving the educational opportunities for gifted students in a rural setting without depleting the local community of its best and brightest students. Similarly, teachers from these rural communities teach 0.4 of their time in the virtual high school and 0.6 of their time in the local public high school. This has lifted the school capacity overall without depleting the best, and often the most creative teachers from the local school. Currently theprovision is a collaboration across 31 different public high schools. The paper speaks about the mechanism that has provided this opportunity, some of the successes so far and some of the challenges overcome. Of particular note is the fact that the school caters for gifted students that are twice or multi exceptional, of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent, of English as a second language background and Anglo-Saxon descent.