We are working on complete websites for the Ministry and Educational potions of this site. To give you a flavor of what we are doing we have posted the following

The Global Learning Center Vision:

We envision using technology to help make our children’s dreams come true!

It is truly wonderful to find a body of gifted educators that deliver an excellent well-rounded academic education that is both enlightening and rewarding to our students. We are excited about turbo-charging this effervescent environment with the excitement technology brings to the table.

Welcome to the Global Learning Center (GLC), a gateway to the abundance of tools, knowledge, and experts accessible through technology. It is our dream that every student that enters the GLC will be able to turn teachings and knowledge into wisdom and apply it to their lives as they blossom into who they were created to be.

At the GLC, we have already started introducing these concepts to our students. The students are designing individualized web-sites describing their dreams, desires, goals, and aspirations. These web-sites will serve as an electronic journal of their journey to self-discovery. They will be setting goals and will be exploring ways to achieve them.

We desire to be a vital epicenter for effective communication between parents, teachers, and today's foremost experts on education and child development.

We are creating an environment that inspires collaborative participation, allowing children to dream and imagine. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

We are involved and united with our community. We wish to be an organization and community united and actuated by a common impulse of passion and interest to help our children discover and use their unique gifts and talents.

The GLC will become part of a geographically dispersed environment to achieve a multitude of goals. For example, we are implementing video conferencing with people who are experts in the field of educational technology. These experts help guide us through the process of weaving educational technology into the curricula of a variety of subjects.

We are dedicated to leadership development by discovering and using graduate level students from local colleges. These interns will have stewardship responsibilities to the high school learners, staff, and administration at the GLC.

It is our goal to be leaders in thought and action inspiring people to work collaboratively by utilizing available assessment tools to clarify our mission, define results, set goals, and develop a focused plan.

It all starts with a vision and the collaborative efforts of many to make our dreams come true.

Main

In order to help our children’s dreams come true, we need to identify their dreams. Some children can pinpoint with specificity their dreams and goals. However, some children need more guidance. We have obtained marvelous insights into our children by utilizing successful assessment tools created by various psychologists, sociologists, and others. Through the exploration of these various tools, we have developed our own evaluative tools and tests based on our goals and objectives, i.e. helping children discover their gifts, talents, etc.

For example, “What Color is Your Parachute?” is an excellent assessment tool which helps adults discover their career interests and goals. Questions used in this resource were adapted to identify the interests, passions, dreams, and goals of our children. In addition, other self-assessment and personality tests such as Myers-Briggs, etc. were accessed on the internet and incorporated into our assessment process. We used a variety of these resources and developed our own assessment tools.

The advertising wizards on Madison Avenue in New York City are another excellent assessment resource. These talented advertisers and marketers have done extensive observational research to identify the needs, wants, and motivations of our children as potential buyers of various products, including clothing, toys, electronics, etc. These brilliant Madison Avenue wizards applied their findings to effectively and successfully communicate the advantage of buying particular products. This research forms the basis of understanding our young learners. It also inspires us to develop the most effective and successful assessment tools possible.

In addition to identifying our children’s dreams, we need to take inventory of the gifts, talents, and intellectual capacities of our core school family, i.e. teachers, counselors, administrators, and the Board of Directors. We can then determine if the core competencies required to fulfill our vision are embodied in the mosaic of gifts and talents we possess.

I had a life changing experience while selling my house to a minister. His vision was to create a Family Life and Technology Center. He also believed in a strong bond between School, Community, Churches, and all other relevant stakeholders. His dream was to help these varied entities strengthen their capacity to effectively provide educational, economic, health, social, and human services to those in the community who are in need. He used my technological and marketing skills to clarify his dreams. This enlightened vision has set a construct of core competencies required for a project that could literally change our children’s lives.

We also have a chance to add value to his vision, as the Global Learning Center will be an archetype for the technology part of the Family Life and Technology Center.

Once we synthesize the in-depth interpretive analysis of the children, teachers, and administration, we will have insights on our strengths as well as the areas where improvement is needed.

In the areas that need improvement, we will be capitalizing on a local resource, graduate level students majoring in a variety of fields from local colleges and universities. While interning at the GLC, they will provide tutorial help for students and serve as facilitators for the staff. The interns will provide intellectual capital as well as a fresh perspective as we endeavor to build the “Global Learning Center”.

With the input of educators, parents, students and interns, a new instructional technology paradigm is emerging at the GLC emphasizing collaboration to meet the diverse needs and learning styles of the students. This paradigm will be the foundation of our approach to implementing instructional technology into the curriculum. It will be a paradigm that can be duplicated and implemented at any private, parochial, or local school district.

Our goal is to prepare students for our ever changing technological world. We will be teaching them to use technological tools and resources to enhance future learning and exploration throughout high school, college, and the work place. We will accomplish this goal by participating vigorously in the plethora of current developments and theories in the field of educational technology.

As a result, The GLC will serve as a model of a successful informational technology program, which is integrated throughout the educational curriculum. The GLC will represent one of the most dynamic learning environments in the educational community. It will demonstrate how a cohesive, collaborative effort of GLC students, administrators, teachers, and parents along with local colleges and universities and businesses can achieve phenomenal results.

We will be creating a dynamic website for the parents, students, partners, sponsors, and foundations, they will be able to access information about the our mission and educational goals. In addition, with an upcoming teleconference with Pennsylvania’s Governor Rendell, the website could also be used to develop insightful questions for the governor about the issues students may have from Kindergarten through 8th grade.

While creating and developing their own websites as well as the GLC website, our young students are learning, among other things, the many uses and applications of the Microsoft Office Suite. The children will orchestrate video web logs and discussion forums. After they design and develop a topic for a forum, they can invite the entire community to participate. To facilitate individualized curriculums, on-line courses in the student’s area of interest will be used. Local businesses offering internships and volunteer opportunities in their areas of interest are also another resource.

Our teachers will be learning and implementing educational technology into their classrooms. They will become active participants in acquiring the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to weave instructional technology into their curriculums. Teachers will be able to transform their classrooms into a community of learners that collaborate, share resources, and strive for maximum achievement. The use of educational technology will enhance and strengthen the learning environment. It is an approach which will produce measurable results as well as provide educators with tools that enhance and broaden their subject areas.

With creative concepts such as the websites for life initiative, which promises our young learners a website (an online résumé of sorts) to highlight their dreams, articulate their gifts and talents and document their successes, the GLC has become their special place in cyberspace.

Our intranet is becoming a collaboration, communication, and content delivery vehicle capable of moving diverse digital assets around the network including documents, videos, music, and more. Since many of those assets are our students’ video journals, websites, podcast, webcast and more, they have become keenly aware of electronic file management without our explicitly teaching it.

The GLC will participate in a global network, linking schools and communities from around the world to energize the individual curriculums of each and every student that is connected with the GLC. In essence, what we are doing is taking a child’s dreams, hopes, ambitions, gifts and challenges, and immersing them in a community where you have brilliant people, resources, and assets as elements to be carved into an individualized curriculum that works for that human being.

We are delighted that local businesses are supporting us by allowing our students to create websites, digital video ads, business cards, flyers, signs and more. The individualized curriculums of some of our students are leaning towards website design, graphic arts, and various presentation technologies found in Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, and Macromedia Studio 8 which bodes well for this type of work.

The local media are excited and wish to highlight the new paradigm we are developing in the utilization of educational technology. The websites for life project has captivated the media’s imagination. These sites will be the electronic embodiment of our children’s gifts, talents, hopes and dreams. They are something pupils can own forever and of which they can be proud. They can take them from school to college and on into life. What a wonderful record of achievement—a life tool to share with children and grandchildren.

We have done our homework. We know our children, we know ourselves, as an organization, and we know what we want to do. Our vision is clear as we start this journey with all parties wanting to make something work. It is time to execute because these are excellent ingredients for the recipe that uses technology to help make our children’s dreams come true!

We invite all forward thinking people that are interested in advancing the state of the art in educational technology to join us on this grand adventure.