The Role of Technology in Gifted and Talented Education: A Review of Descriptive and Empirical Research

Nowadays, we cannot exclude the use of technology from the technology-driven generation as the deployment of Information Technology become a necessity factor toward a successful process; especially in education due to its vital role in enhancing the students’ knowledge and skills development. One type of students that technology plays a major role in their development is gifted and talented students who have unique learning needs that are often overlooked in the traditional education setting. This research aims to explore the progress of technology use in gifted and talented education through reviewing and highlighting the best practices and research in this area based on both descriptive and empirical research. The review will include different areas of gifted programming such as learning and development, assessment, curriculum and learning environments. For this purpose, the online database is employed to extract the research done in the field between years 2010 to 2018. The contribution of this research resides in its exposure to the best practices of integrating technology in gifted and talented education through which teachers and practitioners can be encouraged to adopt them into their contexts. It also provides the researchers with intensive review of technology adoption for gifted and talented education with some suggestions for future research where they can focus their research on. Keywords: technology, gifted, talented, education, onlin

Some Socio-demographic Usage Patterns in Ephemeral Content Sharing Social Networks: The Case of Snapchat

While there is a large number of research work performed in quantifying and exploiting social networks data, there is also a need to understand users and their usage from their socio-demographics standing point. Such an understanding would provide researchers and practitioners a better picture on the interest of specific groups. This paper is an effort towards understanding some socio-demographics patterns on the usage of ephemeral social networks. It describes the results of a statistical investigation performed on a survey operated on a descent number of users to understand four dimensions: Age, level of education, gender, and marital status. Obtained results reveal that while posting video and photos and seeing what my friends are posting are the highest ranked reasons for using Snapchat, users’ socio-demographic dimensions influenced the usage patterns of Snapchat in three other areas: Playing with filters, posting videos and photos, and seeing what celebrities are posting. These findings extend the current understanding of different social networks and is a unique perspective in the usage patterns of Snapchat

Students’ Satisfaction with Online Learning Environments - Post COVID-19

With the outbreak of COVID-19, several countries have requested the closure of all educational institutions; many universities have shifted to online mode during this period. Previous studies showed the need for a continuous assessment of student’s satisfaction with the online delivery methods to improve the teaching and learning experience. This paper is framed with the motivational needs and social presence theories to review students’ perceptions of various online learning environment tools, social presence, and satisfaction with online courses. 846 students in higher education institutes from different backgrounds and cultures participated in the online survey. Results show that the learning environment has a positive, substantial, and significant relationship with social presence. Moreover, factors influencing the learning environment that was significant to student satisfaction are presented

Investigating the effect of social relationships on collaborative learning

Collaborative learning enhances social skills by engaging students with their colleagues and taking responsibility for their own learning. A controversy exists between those who believe that social closeness can lead to positive impact on collaborative learning and those who found a strong negative correlation between prior friendship and groupwork performance. Therefore, using an exploratory approach this paper investigates the effects of group members' relationships on collaborative learning. A mixed methodology is used to examine these effects using 11 undergraduate students collaborated in three groups. The results confirmed that higher motivation led to more participation. Due to the small sample size, there was insufficient evidence about the expectations concerning social relationships. However, interaction was more important than social relationships. Further research is required to support these findings

The Role of TECHNOLOGY in Gifted and Talented Education: A Review of Descriptive and Empirical Research

Nowadays, we cannot exclude the use of technology from the technology-driven generation as the deployment of Information Technology become a necessity factor toward a successful process; especially in education due to its vital role in enhancing the students' knowledge and skills development. One type of students that technology plays a major role in their development is gifted and talented students who have unique learning needs that are often overlooked in the traditional education setting. This research aims to explore the progress of technology use in gifted and talented education through reviewing and highlighting the best practices and research in this area based on both descriptive and empirical research. The review will include different areas of gifted programming such as learning and development, assessment, curriculum and learning environments. For this purpose, the online database is employed to extract the research done in the field between years 2010 to 2018. The contribution of this research resides in its exposure to the best practices of integrating technology in gifted and talented education through which teachers and practitioners can be encouraged to adopt them into their contexts. It also provides the researchers with intensive review of technology adoption for gifted and talented education with some suggestions for future research where they can focus their research on. Keywords: technology, gifted, talented, education, onlin

Enhanced Search-and-Rescue Optimization-Enabled Secure Route Planning Scheme for Internet of Drones Environment

The Internet of Drones (IoD) is greatly developed and promotes many civil applications. However, it can still be prone to several security problems which threaten public safety. The issue of security poses further problems upon linking the IoD to the Internet, as its data stream is exposed to attack. For secure communication between drones, an effective route planning scheme with a major intention of accomplishing security is needed. With this aim, this study develops an enhanced search-and-rescue optimization-enabled secure route planning (ESRO-SRP) scheme for the IoD environment. The presented ESRO-SRP technique mainly aims to derive a set of optimal routes to the destination. In addition, the ESRO-SRP algorithm is derived by the integration of the quasi-oppositional-based learning (QOBL) concept with the conventional SRO algorithm. Moreover, the presented ESRO-SRP technique derived a fitness function encompassing different input parameters such as residual energy, distance, and degree of trust. The experimental validation of the ESRO-SRP technique is carried out under several aspects, and the results demonstrated the enhancements of the ESRO-SRP model over recent approaches. The ESRO-SRP model has provided an increased packet delivery ratio (PDR) of 86%, whereas the BRUe-IoE, ORP-FANET, UAVe-WSN, and TR-UAV Swarm approaches have accomplished a minimal PDR of 79.60%, 73.60%, 67.60%, and 63.20%, respectively