Target+Audience

In the 2004 //A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students - The Templeton National Report on Acceleration// Colangelo, Assouline and Gross repeatedly point to the debilitating isolation of gifted and talented youth. Occasionally they point to the further compounding effects of geographical isolation. Their resounding recommendation is to promote acceleration of gifted students to academic levels which approximate their appropriate interaction. The following quote succinctly points to the effects of isolation:
 * The Problem - Our Target Audience**

> The following poem, which she wrote after her ﬁrst grade-skip, in the shape of a tree, illustrates the emotional growth she experienced when she was able to leave behind her **painful social isolation** and her poignant awareness of her own difference and move towards the warm acceptance and friendship she enjoyed with her older classmates.

> Difference > You are alone > In your long exploration > Of the world of difference. > Yet, as the light consoles the darkness, > And the ﬂame consoles the desolate wick, > So a friend brightens the darkness in your heart > And makes life a joy. > Jessica Bloom, aged 8 years, 10 months > (Colangelo, Assouline and Gross 2004, p .95)

Gifted and Talented students need to experience activities that are beyond the common educational level, these activities must provide enrichment and extend their understandings and skills in complex and challenging ways, thus allowing students to fully utilise their intellectual potential. Given that gifted and talented students are geographically dispersed in rural and isolated areas, it is necessary to develop mechanisms that allow the integration of these students in online activities aimed at supporting students from various localities in a more effective way. Thus allowing students to learn by participating in collective social actions where learners can establish social relationships of knowledge sharing to enhance their learning and reduce their isolation (Smith 2003, 2009).

While acceleration may be effective we suggest that an appropriate e-learning space will be used to assuage both intellectual and geographic isolation. //GnT Connected// intends to achieve this amelioration of isolation. We intend to target Year 8, 9 and 10 students. Students will need to be at least 13 years old to be able to participate on-line.

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