SICK OF TRAINING?
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LEARN ABOUT US
What is GiiLD?
GiiLD is not training. GiiLD is a learning platform. You won't click from screen to screen and then complete a 5 question quiz. You won't earn a certification. Instead, you will use critical thinking and problem-solving skills to complete your own personal project.
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GiiLD does not have courses. Instead we offer Challenges. A challenge is a custom, personalized project that you find interesting - because you are more likely to learn something when you are interested and emotionally connected.
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So then WHAT IS GiiLD? GiiLD is a project-based learning platform. It encourages personalized learning. And it is modeled after open source.
How does it work? You start your project (a Challenge). You write a blog (Journal Entries) about what you are learning or struggling with. You search the internet for all the free stuff to that will help you learn (Bookmarks). You think about what steps you need to take to complete your Challenge (Task Manager). You ask questions (Forum). You help people (Comment). And you interact with the community of learners (Chat). GiiLD depends on its users to document their learning journey - which GiiLD tracks (a Pathway). And as others document their journeys, you can use their Pathways to help you complete your Challenge. THAT is GiiLD.
A real example of GiiLD in action.
Meet Zeke. College student. Physics major. Very little programming experience. Zeke's goal: get into a good graduate school and study biomedical engineering.
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So GiiLD designed a programming Challenge for him: Use an iPhone and an Apple Watch to determine if someone is fit to drive after consuming alcohol. (Zeke doesn't drink alcohol) Zeke completed his challenge and you can see his Pathway in GiiLD.
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Zeke finished his Challenge in 2.5 months and his "virtual breathalyzer" works!
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The best part: Zeke was admitted into a prestigious grad program (with a little help from his GiiLD Pathway) and starts Fall of 2020.
Don't take "courses"
Do Challenges!
No more courses! GiiLD uses Challenges as a way to engage each learner. The more personalized the learning environment, the more engaged the learner. It is for this reason that GiiLD has replaced "canned" courses with personalized Challenges; and, thus, training for learning.
GiiLD Users, Key Contributors, and GiiLD Mentors create challenges. This means that YOU can create your own Challenge or leverage an existing Challenge. A good Challenge will draw you in emotionally and will have a few initial tasks to get you started. But then you are on your own to complete the Challenge - no predetermined path or tasks. You figure it out.
Challenges can be taken with or without Pathways. A Pathway is the journey of another learner through the same Challenge. Following someone's Pathway can speed up your learning.
If you’re interested in learning FASTER, and want quicker access to the GiiLD community, we recommend using the Command Center feature found in our Collaborative Learning plan (CL). Otherwise, use our FREE Open Learning (OL) offering which gives you full access to every Challenge, Pathway and Forum. You will learn more in one GiiLD Challenge than any amount of classic courses. Don't train; Learn!
Another real-life example: Andrew likes games.
His Challenge: create a simple 2D game for the browser that is capable of head-to-head play.
Click HERE to see the results.
Also, log in to GiiLD to see Andrew's Pathway for this Challenge and learn from the steps he took!
How to Use GiiLD
It's YOUR Path!
GiiLD's Open Learning (OL) is different from typical training platforms. There are no courses; just Challenges. The steps aren’t laid out for you. Instead, you’re encouraged to explore and wrestle with things. We want you to engage your passions to analyze and problem solve. If we just gave you the steps to complete the task you wouldn't learn as much. GiiLD's OL platform is supposed to be challenging. It is designed to help you really learn.
Bookmark your Resources
In order to complete your Challenge, you’ll want to read and watch things. GiiLD's content is crowd-sourced by our community. And every time you Bookmark something that helped you, you are helping a future learner. Maybe a website has information that helps you understand something. Maybe you watch youtube videos that help explain things. Content that helps you LEARN something can come in many forms. We're talking articles, forum, blogs - even comments. As you learn and bookmark those helpful artifacts, your Pathway will continue to grow.
Journaling - YOUR story about learning
Writing a journal while you’re learning helps you learn, improves your communication skills and helps others learn! Sharing your story creates your personal reference library and it will be relevant to future learners. Journaling also helps you articulate your thoughts, organize your bookmarks, and ponder the next steps as you complete your Challenge.
Content that is Current, Relevant
Since others have taken Challenges in GiiLD - and have bookmarked, liked, and commented - many of these helpful artifacts are readily available in the GiiLD. GiiLD will organize potential bookmarks from past learners and suggest specific artifacts that could help.
The Power of Pathways
To speed things up, we offer to show you completed pathways for past learners. Pathways allow for the acceleration of the learning process. See how others accomplished the challenge! And when you are done, not only did you finish the Challenge, you also created a pathway - YOUR pathway - that someone else might want to use. Someone who's personal learning style and level of experience closely match yours.
Command Center
GiiLD's Command Center is your personal "space" to work on your Challenge. It brings all the GiiLD assets within one click and connects you to the users who are working on that Challenge. Command Center is available in Collaborative Learning (CL) and can be upgraded in our Team Learning plan (TL) for those who want to work on private Challenges with people you choose. TL is great for Code Clubs, Hackerspaces, and Pair/Team/Extreme Programming.
For Parents
GiiLD offers a plan dedicated for the Parents of learners. We call it Parent Learning (even though it is really the kids who are doing the learning!). Parent Learning (PL) is great for Homeschooling, Unschooling, Distance Learning or kids who simply want to do more. PL offers GiiLD Curriculum that is created by experts and designed specifically for kids. PL also offers a slick dashboard (Parent Feed) that will help you quickly see how your kid is progressing in their learning journey. Please know that PL is not a requirement for Homeschooling - it is merely a set of features to give parents peace of mind.
Leverage Groups and Experts with Enterprise Learning (EL)
GiiLD offers access to GiiLD Groups in our Enterprise Learning plan (EL). GiiLD Groups allow for dashboard-level oversight and reporting for cohorts of learners. GiiLD Groups is where you get to see LOTS of learners' Pathways in one place. So if you are a teacher, manager, or administrator of a team of people who all need to "learn," GiiLD Groups make tracking each learner's process super easy. EL also gives you access to GiiLD Experts and Mentors who can help design custom Challenges, mentor individual learners, review code and provide an assessment of the individual's learning overall.
