deti.mensa.cz: a website for teachers and parents of gifted children
By the beginning of November 2012, Mensa CR managed to launch a new website, predominantly targeting parents and teachers of gifted students – the http://deti.mensa.cz website. As the statistics show, the website has become increasingly popular over the years. In this article, I would like to briefly outline the Children’s Mensa website content.
The website was created in the view of continuously developing and broadening activities of Children’s Mensa, which led to the urgent need to make a wide range of information accessible to the public. The former “Gifted children” section of the main Mensa CR website (http://www.mensa.cz) gradually grew inadequate, due to the increasing extent of information relayed to the readers, and for this reason, Mensa CR strived to create a new, separate internet presentation, aggregating all information (especially) for gifted children’s parents in one place. After several months of work, we managed to collect all of the necessary information about Gifted Children’s Clubs, schools co-operating with Mensa, and some other co-operating subjects nationwide, and the website was introduced to the public at the Mensa Conference on Talent Development, which took place in November 2012 in Prostejov.
The principal aim of the website is to help gifted children’s parents in their search for suitable activities for their children, along with the presentation of Children’s Mensa activities that could be of use to them. It is not uncommon that mothers who are under a huge workload resign on developing their children’s talents – although there may be a Gifted Children’s Club nearby, which they know nothing of. We hope that the new website will prevent such events by providing clear and concise information to the parents. A map depicting all of the clubs, schools, and kindergartens co-operating with Mensa in individual regions is available on the website, along with a list of events for gifted children taking place in their region, as well as interesting articles published by co-operating teachers and club leaders.
Apart from the regional data, the website also offers a wide range of general information on talent, be it articles on gifted children related topics, links to literature for the general and expert public, legislation, and tips for well-proven child games. Another important feature is the Calendar of events, divided by type of event (Games Day, competitions and tournaments, Gifted Children’s Clubs meetings, lectures, workshops, meetings of families with gifted children, summer camps and suburban camps, and other events). All teachers and leaders co-operating with Mensa can add their own events, and thereby spread the information of their activities. Leaders and teachers also can publish photographs from past events, write articles or comments, upload documents, etc., and in general, steer the presentation of their school or club on the Mensa website in the desired direction.
Registration is very easy, and is not limited to teachers – it is also open to the parents, which will prevent them from missing any important information, as they will receive e-mails about interesting articles and current events. Parents will also get access to documents and photo galleries that will be tagged by the school, kindergarten, or club as “for our children’s parents only”. Since June 2015, they have also been able to join the discussion in our Discussion Forum.
Mensa CR activities for gifted children are indeed extraordinary, even on an international scale, and we are pleased to mention that other national Mensa organizations have already noticed this fact. To give just a few examples - Chris Leek, a member of the Executive Board of Mensa International, praised the Logical Olympiad in the Mensa World Journal (February 2013). The US and German Mensa organizations also expressed interest in our activities for gifted children. To further promote our achievements in this area internationally, we have also created an abbreviated version of the website in English.
The Mensa website content is at present a collective work of dozens of people. If you, however, feel that something important is missing from the website, or if you have any other constructive observations or topics for the further development of the website, please contact us at: deti@mensa.cz.
Related topics
15.6.2015
Keywords: Children’s Mensa, Logical Olympiad, Gifted Childrens’ Clubs, Mensa Conference on Talent Development, co-operating schools, co-operating kindergartens
deti.mensa.cz: a website for teachers and parents of gifted children 15.6.2015 Lenka Šnajdrová |
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 distribution of clubs, schools and kindergartens co-operating with Mensa CR (as on 15 June 2015) |
 so far, Prague has the most dense network of kindergartens cooperating with Mensa CR (as on 15 June 2015) |
 so far, Moravia has the most dense network of gifted childrens’ clubs (as on 15 June 2015) |
 schools co-operating with Mensa CR are somewhat unevenly distributed all over the country (as on 15 June 2015) |
 basic information on the Mensa NTC Learning method |
 report from the Mensa Conference on Talent Development – March 2015 |
 discussion forum of the Children’s Mensa |
 articles dealing with the topic “Problems in school” (as on 15 June 2015) |
 webpage “Competitions for children and adolescents” (as on 15 June 2015) |
 link page “Books, further reading” (as on 15 June 2015) |
 webpage “Projects for (not only) gifted pupils and students” (as on 15 June 2015) |
 link page “Interesting games” (as on 15 June 2015) |
 example of introductory presentation of a co-operating school |
 example of photo gallery of a co-operating schools |
 example of articles written by a teacher in a co-operating kindergarten |
 example of archive of events of a Gifted Childrens’ Club |