A real world example of Asynchronous Development

This is a non-thing post! My Google Reader alerted me to a fascinating discussion that was very current. I track The Tempered Reader who I find to provide wonderful thought provoking posts.

As a newbie, this post (The Price of Student 2.0?) got me more excited about the blogosphere than anything else I've encountered so far. The interaction at Drape's Takes resulted in such a varied and rich reaction. There are threads about social networking skills and communication skills, and many other technology threads. But my point-of-view is from gifted education and my knowledge of the 2.0 tools is quite limited. In the interaction, I saw the opportunity to discuss the needs and experiences of a gifted kid. As adults, we are not usually constantly barraged by people blatantly providing direct instruction. Kids are. As adults, we would get really tired of everyone acting like we're clueless about everything. To some degree, I think many kids start to feel this way as they enter adolescence. It’s part of growing up. But gifted kids feel this way much more often – and often they DO know more than the adults around them.

This interaction also exemplifies the asynchronous development of gifted kids. Most people have similar levels of development in their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical abilities. High achieving people are included – those darn folks who just seem a little better at everything! But gifted folks aren’t like that. They have some areas in which they are much more developed than others. The area(s) develop(s) more rapidly than the others. So in some areas they are much “older” than in others. They think at the level of an adult when it comes to content, but not when it comes to social interaction, for example.

Thank you to Arthus for allowing the discussion to continue. Thank you to the Tempered Radical for sharing it on his blog. I think this interaction contains lessons for all of us.