Futurist
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#smithingifted Teacher Lab: Where Teaching Ideas Get Tested
The #smithingifted Teacher Lab is a place where teaching ideas move from theory into real classrooms. I’ll share the successes, challenges, surprises, and adjustments that come from using gifted education, STEM, robotics, technology, and creative-thinking strategies with real students. But the Teacher Lab isn’t just about my classroom—teachers who use #smithingifted curriculum can share their…
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Why I Start Gifted Class with the BreakoutEDU Puzzle of the Day 🔐🧠
This blog post explains how using the BreakoutEDU Puzzle of the Day at the beginning of gifted class helps students build critical thinking, problem-solving, perseverance, collaboration, and flexible thinking. These quick puzzles encourage productive struggle, curiosity, pattern recognition, and deeper reasoning while also giving teachers valuable insight into how students approach challenges. It’s a simple…
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💧 From Data to Innovation: The Every Drop Counts Google Sheet
What if a Google Sheet could move students from researching global water problems to thinking like Water Systems Engineers? See how the Every Drop Counts KPI Tracker helps gifted students compare countries, analyze inequities, uncover patterns, and turn real-world data into evidence-based innovation.
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🤖 AI Detectives: Teaching Gifted Students to Think With AI—Not Surrender Their Thinking to It
By Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingifted Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of the world our students live in. They can ask AI to explain a math problem, generate a story, brainstorm a science project, summarize information, create an image, or answer a research question in seconds. But there is one enormous problem: AI…
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Every Drop Counts: Exploring New Mexico’s Water Resources in the Global Innovation Lab 💧🌵
This blog post explores New Mexico’s water resources through The Global Innovation Lab’s Every Drop Counts challenge, helping students connect science, geography, agriculture, technology, law, and systems thinking. It also explains how the Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado Rio Grande case and the 2026 Supreme Court settlement affect groundwater use, farming, communities, industry, and…
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The Global Innovation Lab Is Coming to the NMAGT Fall Institute 2026 🌎💡
This blog post introduces The Global Innovation Lab, a student-centered learning experience designed to help gifted learners tackle real-world challenges through collaboration, creativity, design thinking, data analysis, and systems thinking. It also highlights the program’s upcoming appearance at the New Mexico Association for the Gifted Fall Institute 2026: Unmasking Brilliance, where educators can learn how…
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Every Drop Counts: Turning Water Conservation into a Real-World STEM Challenge
Global Innovation Lab: Every Drop Counts challenges students to become water detectives, systems thinkers, and innovators. Through research, water audits, collaborative design, and persuasive presentations, students create realistic solutions to reduce water waste while considering people, the environment, cost, safety, and unintended consequences. This hands-on STEM experience empowers students to see that protecting our water…