Mentoring from Afar

from Kevin’s Meandering Mind by dogtrax

This morning, after reading Sue Waters’ Edublogger post, I followed a link to a classroom site in Australia. The teacher — Al Upton — is looking for virtual mentors for his classroom of young bloggers (called MiniLegends — love that name) and so, I signed up. I felt a bit strange about having to choose one of the kids from the selection of photos but sort of randomly chose one from the list. I decided on a boy named Sam. (Hi Sam, if you are reading this — you will probably now get a “ping” from my link to your site)

The idea is that educators from around the world follow the student blogs, offer comments and suggestions, and encourage them as writers. I think this is a fantastic idea and I am interested to see how it all pans out for the Australian students, who know they are writing for a real audience out in the world.

I am also involved in a distant mentoring with a high school student (hi Bryan) from Kansas, who is working on a year-long project around claymation animation. He has been emailing me questions and giving me updates on his progress, and I have been trying to give feedback and answers as best as I can. It’s interesting and I hope he will share his final project with me.

This concept of mentoring from afar demonstrates another wrinkle of possibilities in the Web 2.0 World, where the ability to reach out and support others is as simple as a connection to the Internet. It is a pleasure to find a way to support both of these young men, Sam and Bryan, in any way I can, and I hope that if you are given the opportunity, you will take it.

And you can: just head over to Al’s blog and sign up as a mentor. I’d hate to see any kids on his list left out of the program.

Peace (in support and encouragement),

Kevin