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Sadly, my family is soon to become one of the statistics of Michigan’s floundering economy. We’ll be leaving the Grand Rapids area, leaving Michigan all together, within the new month or two. After several months of unemployment, my husband has found and accepted a job out of state. Therefore, I will no longer be maintaining the Grand Rapids Learning Exchange website. I do have a few things that I’d like to put out here before the move, so grab your calendars as I will be posting them immediately. If new things arrive (and I have the time amidst, de-cluttering, packing up and selling my house), I will continue to post them on this website.
I have enjoyed the process of expanding the awareness of secular homeschooling in the Grand Rapids metro region, and I hope that you all continue to enjoy learning along with your children in the months and years to come. I will miss homeschooling here in Grand Rapids, the fabulous friendships I’ve made with other homeschoolers and non-homeschoolers, and the quality public resources the area offers. I’ll especially miss the GRPL and KDL library systems; they are truly spectacular and have saved my educational budget (or lack thereof these past months) day after day after day.
If anyone would like to take over the grlearningexchange URL for the purpose of expanding secular homeschooling resources in the GR metro area, please let me know and I will transfer the name to you without charge. To run the website, you will need a web-hosting service and to pay an annual domain name fee (approx. $10/yr) which is coming due in April. I can transfer all the GRLE files and content to you once you have a server available.
Please be aware that if no one else takes over the website, it will automatically be dropped in early April when the domain name expires.
The website went down during a routine upgrade on Tuesday morning last week and has been alternately fought with, ignored, bribed and threatened for the past 7 days. Working across 3 time zones and 2 countries, it was finally back up as of this morning. What a headache! Many thanks and kudos go out to Bob for saving my sanity. Within 24 hours he had it back up and running – despite me.
As you’ll notice, there are some changes to the website. In no particular order:
- There is no longer a static Welcome page. Typing in the web address will now direct you straight to the individual posts (with a “sticky” Welcome post). Also down are the individual pages which duplicated the content of the postings. As a busy homeschooling mom, I just don’t have time for duplication.
- Post footers will divided into large general Categories and more specific Tags. You can click on any of these to find similar material.
- I have narrowed the direction of the site somewhat to avoid being pulled in so many directions. Most posts will be regarding things of interest or need for older children and teens (although not exclusively). This is what my family and most of my contacts have, so that’s what I naturally find. I will, however, post about any really fabulous activities or resources that I find for younger children too.
- I’ve deleted some older posts that no longer have relevance (e.g., outdated classes and exhibits that have ended) to keep the website manageable for searches.
- The Community Calendar will be cleaned up significantly to make it more useful and accessible.
I hope you like the new layout and find it useful. I can’t stress enough how much I would love to see some comments on the posts that go up. With little feedback, it can feel a bit like I’m spitting in the wind. Are any of you finding these posts useful?
At the bottom of each post, you’ll see icons to link to Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. There are also icons that will allow you to email or print the post or save it to your hard-drive as a PDF file.
PS – If you signed up for the weekly newsletter but you’re not getting it, please sign up again. I know some of the subscriber info files were “eaten” in the recovery process. Many, many apologies if yours was one of them.
If you’ve been wanting to add a listing to the GRLE, you can now just click on the new bar link underneath the header picture that reads Click HERE to Add Your Content to the GRLE Website.
Many, many thanks to Stephanie for letting me know that there should be a more logical way for people to get their information onto the GRLE website. Sorry about the confusion, everyone!
If you’ve found something unclear or confusing, please feel free to let me know either by leaving a message via the link above or email.
If you’re get your GRLE information through a feed reader or the weekly newsletter, there is a poll up on the left hand sidebar. Help guide the direction of GRLE.
If so, you might want to subscribe to the weekly newsletter. It is a compilation of all the posts from Wednesday through Tuesday of each week, sent to your email address in one compact email. The link to subscribe is at the top of the upper right-hand sidebar. This is the perfect option for people who like to keep their in-boxes neat and tidy, yet don’t want to miss anything.
Another option is to subscribe to either the email feed or the RSS feed for your feed-reader - this is the best way to get those HAPPENING TODAY listings. Both subscription links are above the Search bar in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. The email feed will send you an email alert every time a new post goes up. The RSS feed will update your feed-reader with the same information.
If you really don’t want to miss out on anything at all, you can subscribe to both the newsletter AND one of the two post feed options – email or RSS delivery. Nothing will get past you that way!
Things have certainly been moving along these past two weeks. Since its May 1 introduction (and as of last night), 462 individuals have visited the GRLE website. I almost fell out of my chair when I saw that this morning. Twenty-eight new people came by yesterday alone, and they looked at 123 pages between them.
Since I’m a bit of a stats junkie, I thought I’d share the top five most viewed pages with you. They are:
- Sale and Swap Area
- Et Cetera (the blog)
- Let’s Get Together
- The Community Calendar
- Teachers & Tutors
This website is meant to be an interactive one. I can’t even begin to pretend to be the source of all secular and apolitical homeschooling resource information in the Grand Rapids metro region. Most especially, I’m going to need your help finding teachers & tutors – people looking for new students or folks with skills they are willing to share with an eager learner.
One of the big bug-a-boos we all hear eventually is, “But what about socialization?” Quite apart from the isolationist stereotype that prompts such comments, we are obviously quite interested in social events. I can put in what I find, but I’ll need your help too. Do you know of any interesting and homeschooler or family-friendly events going on around town for the Community Calendar? Would you like to meet some moms and/or dads (an under-served group of homeschoolers if ever there was one) and their kids at a park, play place or open gym time? If so, could you take that scary first step to plan one and then tell me about it so I can list it on the Let’s Get Together page? What type of social events are you most interested in? Let me know; I’ll see what I can find.
I’m thrilled to see that so many of you are going to the blog to catch up on the latest postings. Please feel free to comment on anything you see there or throughout the website. Your feedback lets me know if I’m heading in the right direction or if you would like to see more of something else. If you haven’t already, subscribing to the weekly newsletter is probably the easiest way to keep up to date with the majority of information listed on the website (the Sale and Swap Area and the Community Calendar being the exceptions).
Finally, I want to thank all the people who have emailed me with encouragement about this website. I can’t express what it has meant to me to know that I’m not typing, and searching, and staying up past my bedtime in vain.
This is the 5th day that GRLE has been up and running. The website has 7 subscribers already who will get weekly updates about what’s new to the site, and there have been 111 visitors so far! How wonderful is that?!
This is a site designed for you, the local homeschooler, unschooler or independent learner. To be useful to you and others like you, we’re going to need some participation to fill up the pages. To recognize a few brave souls, I’d like to acknowledge:
Ed took the first cold leap into the pond and posted about his willingness to help out young adults (and others) interested in learning about what it takes to begin and run a small business on the Teachers and Tutors page. If you haven’t read Daniel Pink’s Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself already, I highly recommend it. He lays out the case for an inevitable rise in small businesses, self-employment for the masses, and strong (yet fluid) business relationships. Did you know there are already more self-employed people than UAW workers? He also promotes homeschooling as the most logical way to educate future self-employed workers. Pink also has a smaller, manga-style, book that young adults are sure to love - The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need .
Amy passed along the suggestion that we include camps and classes from Kendall College of Art and Design. There information should be coming up today. She says her family has had great experiences with the programming there.
Kristen and her family visited the Veen Observatory on International Astronomy Day and highly recommends the experience. She was astounded by the views and thrilled to see her astronomy-obsessed son (9) engage in a long, serious and meaningful conversation with one of the local astronomers. The Veen schedule will also go up today.
Jamie put a few items up in the Sale and Swap area, most for free. Go see if there’s anything you could use and sell or give away any of the homeschooling things your family doesn’t need anymore. Good used curriculum, free or at a fair price, is a very tangible way to support local homeschooling families.
Thank you Ed, Amy, Kristen and Jamie for starting us off. Now, how are you going to participate?
A frequent comment I hear about Grand Rapids is, “There’s nothing to do around here.” Well bowl me over! That is just not so, my learned friend. There is a ton to do in the Grand Rapids metro region.
Seriously, there is an amazing (and amazingly diverse) number of local events to choose from on just about any day of the year. Believe me, my fingertips are wearing down from entering all kinds of great events into the Community Calendar. I have just barely begun to scratch the surface of all that is available around here, but I enthusiastically welcome links and emails regarding any learning-, cultural- or family-oriented events around GR and the metro region that you know of.
Feel free to email them to GRLE.
Think back to when you were little. Do you remember how you learned to ride your bike?
- Did you take a class?
- Did you have to learn the proper name for all the parts of your bike before you were allowed to get on?
- Did you have to take a proficiency exam before you were allowed to ride down to your friend’s house?
- Did you get a professionally trained, certified professional to show you how?
Or
- Did you look around for a big sister or brother, a mom or dad, a grandma or grandpa, a friend or a kindly neighbor who had some time to show you the ropes, give you some encouragement, run along the side of the bike and let go when at just the right time?
I bet it was that last one. Yet learning to ride your bike was a pretty complicated feat. It required you to master quite a few things: balancing, timing, over-coming frustration and a very real fear of falling, guaging speed, operating pedals both forward and backwards, steering and watching for obstacles (both moving and stationary). It also required you to very quickly learn a new skill – orienteering – so you could find your way home again from wherever you pedaled.
Certainly, there are certainly some things – many things – that require a fair amount of professional training to learn, surgery being just one example, but there are far more things that don’t require professional training – even if professional training for it exists.
This is a place to match up those many, many things that require only the simplest of things for someone to learn. This is a place to list those skills that require little more than:
- someone who already has some ability – even if they’re not an expert;
- an interest on the part of the learner;
- a bit of patience on each side; and
- a willingness on the mentor’s part to help someone with fumbling fingers or an overwhelmed brain
- a way for them to know about each other.
Grand Rapids Learning Exchange is set up to meet that last requirement. May you find the skills you desire, a way to share what you know, and a few more wonderful people to add to your world along the way.
I created this website to help homeschoolers, unschoolers, and any independent learners in the greater Grand Rapids area find secular and apolitical educational resources. You’ll also find a few superb resources further afield. I focus mainly on resources for older children and teens (10-19 yrs old) – a group that is generally under-served, but when I find a great resource for younger kids, I’ll include it. Posts are entered as I find them, in fits and spurts, because time is at a premium around here.
If you know about about a secular and apolitical program, class or activity, please send me an email by clicking on the Contact GRLE link on the tab above. You are welcome no matter what you believe, your family makeup, where you live, where you come from, or where you’re going in your educational journey. I have daily proof that helping a child learn is a remarkable gift.
If you’re new to homeschooling, you will soon learn that it means your lives will often resemble a path criss-crossed by academics, board-games, sports, music, household chores, friends and much more. I hope you will use this GRLE website for curriculum ideas, support, and community involvement, while remaining independent and true to your family’s own organizational structure and beliefs.
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