JoeBay U offers an opportunity for anyone to improve his or her understanding, competence, confidence and comfort with creative expression using digital tools. Unlike most schools, where the focus is on teaching, JoeBay U puts the focus on learning—here, the student takes the lead.
JoeBay U course offerings emphasize two major learning categories: creative, imaginative communication-centered writing (a right-brain innovation-oriented learning environment), and a rigorously rational, organization and digital tool building/using left-brain learning environment. In addition, offerings in music and ceramics are available.
Digital Tools: JoeBay U's principal goal is to provide hands-on, clear, simple, understandable, useful, practical information to any student, at any age, with any (or no) digital-tools background who desires to find his or her balance point with these tools. Some individuals have no cell phones, computers or cameras and intend to stay that way. Many, however, find that they feel less and less conversant with emerging digital tools (smart phones, like the iPhone, computers, cameras, software, social interaction technologies like Facebook, etc.) and yet feel few options to discover and learn. They may have found themselves reluctantly participating with these tools, feeling intimidated or frustrated with them, and would welcome some means of systematically becoming more empowered and comfortable.
JoeBay U offers courses that cover the basics of many digital tools. Options exist for intermediate and advanced students who wish to learn and develop specific skills.
Communicate Clearly: Comfort with digital tools is only half the battle. Effectively delivering your story, pitch, goals, intentions, desires, expressions requires a well-crafted message. Words are the tools. JoeBay U will give you an opportunity to improve your letter, web site, blog, manual, novel, essay. There is no substitute for good writing. Personal and business connections increase, misunderstandings and confusion decrease.
Put it Together: Writing effectively and comfortably using digital tools need to work together with a plan, a philosophy, a structure, a package that wrings the most value out of a student's time and money. Real effectiveness comes from designing a system that works best for you and your customers, clients, partners. JoeBay U will work with you to describe and analyze the whole package to ensure it fits with your interest, ability, and goals.
Courses are offered at times and in locations that are a best match for the instructor and student(s). The school specializes in personalization—cookie-cutters don't exist at JoeBay U. We focus not on teaching but on your learning.
Give a student a fish, and he will be hungry tomorrow,
Teach a student to fish, and he will never be hungry again.
It's the 21st Century:
There are realities to living in America that make JoeBay U a resource worth considering:
* The priorities of the Obama Administration place Education among the top three Must Accomplish Objectives, along with Health Care and Energy. Why? Because America's future depends on smart, educated, capable, creative innovative and competent citizens. There are literally billions of less-advantaged people on the earth right now, many of whom are willing to work for much much less than Americans. Millions of these people are already doing American jobs, in India and China. What America must bring to the table is leadership in knowledge, imagination, ideas, implementation. Almost all of these areas are either done by, or certainly done with, digitial tools. If you don't have a glove, you'll never get on the field, you won't be playing the game, and you'll never have a chance to win.
* The current economy takes no prisoners. The recession/depression is slated to last for years. Americans are returning to their roots, which are grounded in self-mastery and clarity. Few on Main Street are as willing to delegate important decisions to Wall Street as they were a few years ago. We all need to know more, and the fastest and least expensive way to know more is to go on line. We also need to know how to sift the wheat from the chaff. More information doesn't always mean more useful information. JoeBay U helps a student not only know how to find information, but how to know what to look for and what to discard. More important than just finding information, JoeBay U helps a student learn how to create and distribute information—you graduate from consuming information to contributing information and thus (hopefully) becoming a player in making solutions.
* The playing field is changing. If everyone has and uses digital tools, (governments, businesses, individuals, professionals), the assumption is that you use them too. Access to information has shifted to the internet—those who don't speak digital tools are finding themselves increasingly disadvantaged. There was a time when there were no seatbelts, no airbags, no smoke detectors, no restrictions on smoking, no one telling you to take your shoes off at the airport, no answering machines or voice mail, no email, no anything dot com. Those times are over. Your friends send emails and pictures of their kids, your bank offers you 24/7 access to your information, you can renew your license tabs at the kitchen table. You can save time and (in the case of the Post Office) save money if you purchase and print postage over the internet (and you don't have to wait in line either). You can send pictures to anyone, anywhere in the world, free. You can talk and see anyone, anywhere in the world, free.
* It's fun. It is freeing. It is fast. It brings you together. It lets you be more efficient and effective. It is virtually cost free. It is empowering. It supports democracy and accountabiltiy and discovery. It is almost impossible for a bad guy to hide, while a good guy's story gets around the world, making a difference, faster than the time it takes to read this sentence.
You have ideas. You have activities. You have only so much time. You want to do more with less. You want to connect / you want to be heard / you want to enjoy. Read about the courses at JoeBay U. Pick one and
"...leave your worries at the doorstep
just direct your feet
to the sunny side of the street."
