Teachers and parents alike often turn to online learning options in order to supplement and/or accelerate gifted students' learning. Does your young person have a strong interest and ability in mathematics, physics, computer programming, literature, writing, history, or foreign language? Does she want to take Advanced Placement (AP) classes that are not offered at her local high school? Or, does your student need a flexible schedule because of family circumstances, work responsibilities, or health issues?

Are you in a school district where your young person’s needs and abilities surpass the available curriculum? Do you homeschool your child, either full-time or part-time, and, as a result, need solid educational resources? Or, do you have a student who doesn't necessarily want to earn credit for extracurricular classes, but instead just wants to expose himself to different topics in order to see if any really interest him? If so, then you may want to introduce your student to the wide range of opportunities available through online learning.

For years, I have been writing about the virtues of distance learning for gifted kids. Over the past few years, the distance learning field has continued to expand. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, many distance learning programs are beginning to use not only computers for their programs, but also everyday technologies, such as cell phones.

Kids are often more comfortable with these technologies than adults. This may be one reason why traditional schools are often unable to adjust to and incorporate these new technologies into the traditional classroom. Adults (both parents and teachers) sometimes lack the expertise that young people have already learned at an early age and use every day. Perhaps it is time for adults to stop fighting these new developments and, instead, embrace them and incorporate them into student learning. Online learning is one good way to start.

If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities available to gifted kids, there is a great deal of information available at the Davidson Institute for Talent Development website and at the Distance Learning Programs page of Hoagies’ Gifted Education website.

 

All research points to the virtues of beginning foreign language early in life—as early as preschool. Both parents and teachers appreciate ways to enrich foreign language instruction for their students who are gifted in this area.

 

As we become more and more global-centric, multilingual skills become even more important. We need to move beyond learning the traditional one foreign language to being comfortable speaking several languages.

 

The following include some helpful resources for teaching or learning a foreign language.

 

This Web site comes from the U.K. It contains ideas for enriching and extending pupils' experiences in foreign languages that include

Here you will find an extensive list of language camps for students of all ages.

 

This is an article in the Duke Gifted Letter, which reviews a couple of software programs that teach foreign languages.

 

If you do an Internet search on “Foreign Language Online,” you will find many free resources, including games for learning languages.

 

Individualized learning can help a person of any age move through a subject at his or her own pace. Neither kids nor parents need to wait for their schools to figure out how to arrange for individualized learning. There are other choices, including private lessons, technology (much of it costing no more than an Internet connection), and mentors.

 

I am personally rediscovering how individualized learning works. For quite a few years I’ve been thinking about becoming proficient in several languages and also studying piano. A couple of months ago I took the plunge.

 

For a foreign language, I decided to start with French. The last time I studied a language was in college. Technology has totally changed the way I can now learn. Rather than spend a lot of money on a class that has a set time schedule and curriculum, I’ve subscribed to a couple of French podcasts over iTunes (free). The podcasts include pdf files on vocabulary and grammar, which I download and print out to accompany the audio podcasts. That way, I can both see and hear the language. I’ve also signed up for an online class at LiveMocha. I learned about this Web site from an article in The New York Times, titled Learning from a Native Speaker, without Leaving Home. I can progress through the LiveMocha course at my own pace with both visuals and audio. I also have the opportunity to communicate with real native speakers by writing, talking together, and even using a Webcam. Once I feel that I have a reasonable understanding of the language, I will join a group in my community that gets together with the sole purpose of speaking the language.

 

The second thing I’m doing is studying piano. (I had taken lessons as a child, under duress, and had never done very well.) I knew that I needed formal, private instruction for this. I interviewed four different piano teachers. Each had a very different style. I am very pleased with the person I chose. He is explaining techniques to me that no one had ever explained before. My teacher does not write lesson plans before working with me; instead, he listens to what I have practiced and watches the way I am using my hands, and then teaches me according to my performance on lesson day. While there is a general plan for the areas we will cover, the real value is in discovering where I am with my studies at a particular time and figuring out what needs to be taught. I can’t think of a better way to learn.

 

Before starting on either of these learning pursuits, I made a commitment to myself to work hard and enjoy each. The coupling of motivation, plus the individualized learning seems to be the perfect match. When hearing my enthusiasm for French and piano, some of my friends have used the words “obsessive” or “highly focused.” Sometimes, in gifted education, we more kindly say a person has a real passion.

 

We hear so much about the benefits of individualized instruction, but it isn’t easy to accomplish in a school setting. At least for some subjects, individualized instruction is the best way to learn. Remember that there are options outside the school setting to learn at one’s own pace.

 

I was at a wedding reception this last week, talking to one of the guests and asking how her kids were enjoying the summer.

 

“Our son had the most incredible experience this summer,” she told me. He’s a bright kid, but hadn’t done well in his French class the last year. “We decided to enroll him at a language immersion camp at Concordia College in MN. The entire time he was there, nothing was spoken except French. All possible ways of communicating in any other fashion were taken away, including cell phones and computers.” She said he absolutely loved the experience.

 

The Concordia Language Villages are located in Moorhead, Minnesota. They teach 14 languages (including Chinese, Finnish, Arabic, Korean, and Russian) and have sessions ranging from one weekend to 4 weeks for students 7-18 years of age. All levels from beginner through advanced are welcome.

 

Day camps are available at several locations for children 4-8 years of age to learn languages such as Norwegian, German, and Spanish.

 

Concordia also has an immersion program for children from countries around the world who want to learn English.

 

Scholarships and financial aid are available. Nearly 15% of the villagers receive scholarships.

 

I found out they also have immersion programs for adults and am going to look into that for myself. Wouldn’t it be fun to learn a different language every year?

 

Some time ago, I had an opportunity to visit an American family who was living and working in a remote area of Ecuador. I was very impressed with their five-year-old daughter who spoke three languages fluently: English, Spanish, and Quechua. No one had made an effort to teach her these languages, but because she was exposed to each on a daily basis, she picked them up on her own. She moved with ease between the languages, quickly ascertaining who would understand which. She was more fluent than her parents in Quechua, the indigenous language of the Andean region.

 

When Janis Jensen, world languages coordinator for the New Jersey Department of Education, visited several foreign language classrooms, she found that students began studying languages in elementary school and were proficient in at least two, if not three, languages by the time they reached secondary school. But Jensen wasn't surprised—she was touring schools in Germany, where early learning and high expectations of proficiency in foreign languages have a long history.

 

Much research is available which demonstrates the advantages of young people learning foreign languages. When children are very young, they often learn languages more quickly. Some schools create very successful immersion programs. The five-year-old I knew in Ecuador was in a naturally occurring foreign language immersion program.

 

In Foreign Languages No Longer Just for Big Kids, Susan Curtiss, a UCLA professor of linguistics, states, "There's something very special about the brain and mind during early life that makes it exactly ripe for developing language." Studies have shown that children who begin learning a second language early in life gain a more native-sounding pronunciation, better overall grammar skills, and other benefits.

 

Spanish remains the dominant foreign language in schools, reflecting in part a trend in U.S. demographics. Hispanics are now the country's largest minority, and the number of children who speak a language other than English at home has more than doubled since 2003.

 

In Foreign Language Learning: An Early Start, Curtain Helena summarizes some of the important reasons for beginning foreign language at an early age.

If education is a means by which to prepare children for the complicated world that they inhabit, to give them tools with which to understand new challenges, then the educational system should offer an expansive foreign language curriculum as early as possible.

 

If parents and teachers wish to start a foreign language program in their school, they will benefit from consulting Guidelines for Starting an Elementary School Foreign Language Program, by Marcia Rosenbusch, National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center. In this article, the author lists reasons why some foreign language programs failed in the 1950s and 1960s and what should be done to assure that a newly started school program will succeed.