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.
