GKE's Innovation Cafe - About Innovation Cafe

GKE's Innovation Café

The opening is designed to provide
a. Inspiration
b. Models
c. Resources
d. Further Opportunities

The GKE Innovation Café is designed for Information Age growth in education. It is designed to offer a fresh, inclusive perspective on the Information Age learner . . . a learner able to access and utilize an educational environment that is no longer confined by traditional boundaries. The GKE Innovation Café serves a 24/7 learner, who crosses boundaries of K-12, university, corporate training, and adult learning based upon learning needs, a learner able to construct new knowledge from old ideas.

The GKE Innovation Café is designed to be a center for the recognition of creativity. But, the GKE Innovation Café is not frozen in stasis. It is designed to grow to become a collaborative, international electronic forum and an Information Age resource highlighter for leaders in education, educators, learners, and families at the K-12, the university, corporate training, and adult learning levels.

The opening version of the GKE Innovation Café is created by a unique GKE USA-based team already in collaboration with the publishing capabilities of Centrix Technology*, China, and Nankai University, Tianjin, China, and in active collaboration and shared interactions with agencies and individuals including GKE Beijing, Shanghai Distance Education, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology University President Richard Gowen, COMWEB Technology Group*, Lucy Lee, President of the Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools, and Yin Chao, Principal of the Allied Elementary School of Peking University.

GKE Innovation Cafe is the second generation of the Electric Soup pilot project developed by Florence McGinn at Hunterdon Central Regional High School. Electric Soup was an award-winning, grant-supported online literary magazine written and produced by students. Electric Soup began in 1995-1996 with eleven student editors and grew to involve over fifty student editors per issue during its five year development. The magazine was recognized nationally and internationally for it innovation, creativity, and educational value*.

GKE Innovation Café contains features to aid educators in locating resources related to China’s National Primary School English Textbook Series edited by Dr. Wenfang Fan of Tsinghua University. Throughout GKE Innovation Café, special icons can be clicked by users to pull up a screen indicating linkages to the Primary School English textbooks series published by Tsinghua University Press. Individual pieces within GKE Innovation Café are aligned as supplemental resources by the editors of GKE Innovation Café. To further help educators, a page was created to allow educators to choose a unit from China’s National Primary School English textbook series and to generate a list of works published in GKE Innovation Café assessed to be effective in engaging and challenging students

Links denoted with a " * " link to external websites that may not be controlled by GKE.