About Debbie

Hi, I am Debbie Smith from the lovely Auckland, New Zealand (Aka Aotearoa, ‘The Land of the Long White Cloud’). Here you can find out a little more about me and the work that I love to do.

I am a New Zealand-trained teacher with more than ten years of successful teaching experience behind me. I recognised the special needs of children who passed through my classes with various learning difficulties, and became passionate about making a difference to their current and future schooling experiences.

At the same time I was searching to find out what was causing my daughter’s lack of understanding, which led to her being found to be dyslexic. I then re-married a creative-gifted man and found out so much more about another end of the learning spectrum, which also needs special care to help the children with this learning difference succeed.

The opportunity arose for me to work full-time on my Masters in Education, (specialising in gifted education and educational technologies) which I completed in 2007, and in doing so found a whole new area of learning that I was interested in. Online teaching and learning seemed a suitable way to reach gifted students dotted in schools around the country, with no effective peers to meet with. And a good way, too, for providing professional development to their teachers.

I have taught gifted students face-to-face and online, both at primary level (using theme-based curricula) and secondary level (online web journalism). I see online learning becoming even more popular to meet the needs of those who are outside the norms for their peer groups.

Thinkersonline blog is my professional blog about gifted education and online teaching and learning. It takes the perspective … Have you thought about it this way?