GlobalLiteracy.org came about from a vision by Richard Brincefield and Rod Weiss. That vision was true Global Literacy.

In 1979, Richard began working with a version of CBT (CDTS - Computer-Directed Training System) developed by the United States Air Force that was a forerunner of WBT. It ran on Honeywell mainframes. Students from around the world could take courses, as long as they had access to a terminal and the World-Wide Honeywell network. Richard spent over 300 hours taking courses on subjects such as COBOL, GMAP (Honeywell GCOS8 Mainframe Assembly Language), JCL, and Time Sharing etc. He learned more from this online training than all the traditional classes he had previously taken on these same subjects. He could review the content when it was convenient to him. He was able to access training from home using an Execuport portable terminal (60 lbs) at 300 baud with thermal paper printouts.

In the mid 1980's, Richard installed and maintained CDTS on newer mainframes based in Phoenix Arizona. A newer version of CTDS was acquired from the City of Phoenix (Arizona) when they converted from Honeywell mainframes to IBM mainframes in the 1980's. The training was accessed from Australia, France, and England as well as the U.S. CDTS had all the features supported by a modern LMS, including registration, routing, reporting and an authoring system.
Richard became interested in CBT after he purchased his first PC (Apple II Plus) in 1980. The first CBT program purchased was a "Metric System Tutor" written by a father/son team in Mesa, Arizona. It cost $70 (1980 money) written in Apple Basic and was very good CBT.

In 1981, Richard's youngest daughter (age 14) was getting poor grades in high school (he was a single father at the time). She would tell him over-and-over, "Dad, I'm doing the best I can". He purchased several CBT courses for the Apple on subjects such as Math and Grammar. One or more of the CBT courses recorded students progress or lack of progress. After he got home from work, he could bring up the Apple and use a special password to see what she had or hadn't done. She couldn't fake it. After working with the Apple, Richard's daughters next report card showed dramatic results (an A, several B's and C's - and no more D's).
Richard also supported installing and maintaining courseware on 3Com LANs (when Novell was in its infancy, and Microsoft had not purchased the 3Com software to build their own LAN solutions). CBT courses, such as TeleTutor's X.25 were available from the LAN Server. It was excellent training even by today's CBT/WBT standards. A more up-to-date version can be found today by going to www.teletutor.com (now owned by www.vcampus.com).
Richard later developed CBT courses using ToolBook and Authorware designed to run from a LAN.
In 1994 Richard started a non-profit company called Second Chance Learning, Inc. for the purpose of promoting Adult Literacy.

Our experience within Second Chance Learning was to acquire donated PCs and install certain educational software, but the activity was frustrating. Getting donated PCs was no problem. Good educational software was available so that the total price to put a PC into a home running Computer Based Training (CBT) could be accomplished in the $300 to $500 price range. The problem was that the principals behind Second Chance all had full time jobs and very little time to setup the PCs in needy homes and give the initial training.

Richard first came in contact with HTML in 1994. That set the foundation for his future education work.
1994 is also the year that Richard met Rod Weiss and Mark Dixon .
In 1994, a S-Corp was started called SofTrain, Inc. Richard and Rod were two of five owners.
Richard went to work at the University of Phoenix in 1996 and was there for four years. During this time, he was assigned for two years to a "skunk" team project headed by the University president to develop Web-based training. Richard introduced IBTAuthor (now known as Docent) to the University. He remained under contract to support Docent for the university until 2003.
Six people at the University of Phoenix were critical in helping Richard's eLearning efforts:
1. President Bill Gibbs
2. Nancy Blankenship
3. Beth Aguiar
4. Bill Owens
5. Bill Carroll
6. Tina Goldberg.

Richard's dream for many years has been Global Literacy. Existing LMS's were all proprietary and expensive. Most LMS's are based on older technologies. Richard decided to develop a new LMS in 2000 (TraineeTracker) based on superior technology that could be used by the masses, as well as by large companies and governments.
Richard developed SofTrain's LMS (TraineeTracker) which is proprietary (ColdFusion). Richard developed this LMS in response to a major SofTrain customer (HotelTraining.com) needing a powerful LMS to replace Docent. HotelTraining.com had initially purchased a Docent license, but in time the yearly renewal fee would have been more than the original cost. Without an affordable LMS solution like TraineeTracker, both HotelTraining.com and SofTrain would have been out of business.

In 2003, we looked at completing converting TraineeTracker (ColdFusion based) to run using PHP and MySQL and making it Open-Source under the GPL license. The conversion was about 70% done.
But after a new look at Moodle, it was found to be much more advanced than an Open-Source TraineeTracker would have been initially. Why re-invent the wheel?
Today and in the future, we will focus on promoting Global Literacy with a new company formed in June 2003 - GlobalLiteracy.org.

Combining world-class professional development, best of breed Learning Management Systems software & appropriate technology, we help organizations discover the best solutions to fit their needs and raise the funds to make their programs and projects successful.