Topic: Global Literacy Foundation has been set up to help develop, deliver and promote accessible, quality online learning programs worldwide.
By Rod Weiss, of Global Literacy Foundation Inc.
--------
Who we are / What we do
Global Literacy Foundation (GLF) aims to become a world leader in improving educational access and achievement through interactive online participation. We are currently evaluating the best learning technologies, assembling training development partners with high-quality learning content, and preparing excellent online learning coaches worldwide. We are also creating new partnerships for investing in the learning potential of the human spirit. Our foundation supports the basic premise that quality learning should be personal, affordable and convenient.
For the past 25 years, many on our team have been involved in pioneering digital blackboards and professional development for learning and personal improvement. Our dream of truly open, affordable and effective online learning for all is within sight. Our foundation seeks to advocate and support initiatives clearly improving availability of affordable yet effective internet-based learning content and resources. Today we are at the cusp of complete online learning solutions becoming available (at very little cost) to access learning content (with help of online coaches) and certification using education-oriented servers worldwide. We are a team all about empowering people with affordable online training components (content, tools and technologies). Our goals toward Global Literacy include using our non-profit foundation (and expert staff) to break down traditional cultural, opportunity, and educational barriers toward achieving higher levels of literacy on a global scale.
Defining the Problem
The negative effects of unfulfilled potential on our local community and the world economy are colossal.
We have all heard about the astonishingly high percentages of individuals, even within our own communities, who lack the basic skills necessary for self-improvement. These potentially capable people remain challenged to read effectively, communicate socially beyond their comfort zone, or learn higher value skills. Community leaders frequently refer to “the digital divide”, and to those on the ‘other side’ of that divide who are not contributing to society, making poor personal choices, and feeling trapped by life. Many of us have difficulty understanding the surprisingly large portions of our community who are not actively learning new skills or contributing to society. It seems extraordinary with all the knowledge and information available to us. Yet, even in our ‘information age’, learning has not sufficiently kept pace with technical achievement. Factors such as financial resources, location and motivated parents still often determine access to levels of education and career advancement.
Often the financial challenges alone in going back to school may seem overwhelming. Single parents may face difficulty acquiring affordable, good quality day care in order to complete education programs. Family breadwinners may find it hard not just to find the fees, but also the time to take a class, while supporting their families. Young people may require increasing financial support from parents to undertake good quality online courses. Additionally, there may be stress, and often fear, of learning new skills and meeting new people in classrooms (real or virtual).
While online learning has often been seen as a panacea to many of the traditional roadblocks to education, much of what has been on offer duplicates those roadblocks and creates new ones. Online learning (learning program management, measurement and administration), has often been too expensive, complex and proprietary for many audiences worldwide, both for individuals and for low to medium sized organizations. Importantly, many of these programs have also neglected the students’ need to access trained and professional online coaches, and embrace interactive elements vital to learning. Those interested in wider education have speculated that if individuals worldwide can (at little to no cost) access web-based search engines, and conduct retail transactions via eBay, why shouldn't learning programs also be easily accessible at little to no cost? The web is becoming steadily more accessible and acceptable as a learning vehicle to corporate personnel and individuals worldwide. Yet outside of technical software training, there exists a serious lack of access to free or discounted training to improve basic competence and learn practical career-building skills.
Providing the Solution
Global Literacy Foundation staff have initiated and deployed some of the largest online learning programs since the inception of the internet. We have studied the online learning landscape and its barriers, and have targeted them with innovative solutions. Global Literacy Foundation wants to open the roadblocks and build pathways to literacy and lifelong learning. We can do this by creatively using our armory of available learning content experts, professional development, social interaction and affordable learning technology. A principal goal is to assemble the best components to deliver program affordability along with significant reductions in per student costs. Internet-based online education programs can become a great equalizer for those without major resources. To maximize learning and career potential for all, we need to start setting sights on those who least can afford our online content libraries, online coaches, tools and technologies.
Programs we support such as One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) require help coaching, managing and measuring the effectiveness of learning programs. At a minimum, online learning requires a functional personal computer and an available internet connection, which alone can be huge challenges to acquire and secure. Global Literacy Foundation wants to remove these complexities from the programs we support, and promotes the concept of one affordable computer per student wherever possible. We have the executive and online coaching teams, the freedom and expertise to consider open source learning and productivity solutions, and the experience our members offer to activate on-demand learning programs in both State and Federal programs. We aim to make available the latest and best in professionally coached online education pathways, then duplicating successes worldwide for the benefit of all populations.
Until recently, a unified group of compelling interpersonal coaches, learning tools, computing platforms and content have been missing to make quality global learning feasible in multiple languages, independent of computing platform or device. Global Literacy Foundation has partnered with other like-minded organizations to deliver learning in new affordable and exciting ways, and in this way, the content itself is sustainable and continually improves. We have formed Global Literacy Foundation in an effort to share these innovative, non-proprietary, online learning solutions and elements. We couple these with excellence in professional development and regularly lobby our governments for opportunities to pilot and deploy our solutions.
Our foundation is dedicated to leading government and community leaders in new directions toward creating affordable learning programs that succeed because they are fun, engaging, and convenient for everyone. The opportunity is within our grasp to do something significant about widespread illiteracy and lack of basic skills. However, it will take a team approach with standardized methods and an emphasis on social interaction, along with high levels of professional development expertise and tools. The appropriate software and hardware vehicles are coming into alignment now for making this dream of affordable, and effective online learning a reality, for nearly anyone able to access the internet. Global Literacy Foundation has invested heavily in new forms of training and learning architecture that will make learning far more engaging and affordable. The projects featured on our website demonstrate the leading edge route we are taking to build extremely affordable yet well-designed skill- and career-building for all ages.
With your help, we can open up online training for all in order to acquire basic skills, and to provide pathways to pursue affordable skills and career building as well as lifelong learning. Your gift will be used to continue ongoing efforts to research, consolidate, partner, promote, assemble, develop curriculum, test, deploy, coach, measure, and report on the very best most-affordable non-proprietary online learning programs available. Join our efforts to strategically assist people in accessing relevant online learning content, and to provide online-coaching to make learning programs manageable and exciting. We would be glad to discuss our reporting structure, progress measures and how, together, we can make significant differences worldwide.
Rod Weiss, B.S.
Board Chairman of Global Literacy Foundation Inc.
www.globalliteracy.org
