Introduction | Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | Final Words

Introduction

About four months ago, I embarked on a new journey into group mentoring from a distance. The opportunity to be a mentor as well as a mentee within an existing group seemed like an opportunity that was tailor-made for the mentoring project. I chose a group of which I was a member and in which I identified a need.

This project started with a group of educators in technology from several private schools in the Dallas Metroplex. This group, informally known as TEC, meets face-to-face two to three times per year. During these meetings, we exchange ideas and experiences from our own practices. All too often, the one hour meeting is consumed by sharing of vendor lists and the latest in teaching applications classes.

In our last face-to-face, I proposed that we start an online community that would facilitate increased frequency in the sharing of knowledge. I did this by sending out information prior to the meeting followed by a discussion of the small group that was able to attend the 2 nd of the year, face-to-face. The initial interest was quite high. E-mail indentations with instructions in how to join were sent out to the group. Today, there are thirteen members (counting myself) in the group. The group was setup in TI as a private group room. I made the room private as this is a small group that all share two things in common: educational technology and their practice are in an independent school. By closing the room, I figured that members might feel more freedom to share knowing that everyone in the group has this commonality.

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First Group Room

I populated the room with several links related to an e-mail exchange prior to our last meeting and items from the meeting. I believed that this would help foster the natural flow of conversation from the meeting to the online environment.

Containers were created for general topics where the discussions would take place. Many of these folders had some content waiting when members were invited to join. In hind sight, this might not have been the best way to go. I may have provided too much content prior to the opening of the room making it a little intimidating for those that might not have participated in this type of exchange.

The level of activity was less than I would have expected based on initial interest in such a group. Our first exchange related to a question posed by another member of the group. This was a discussion related to using technology with students diagnosed with dysgraphia. This discussion involved 3 authors sharing personal experiences as well as articles related to the topic. While this conversation showed promise in the growing of the group, discussion died off rather rapidly and there was a lull in the exchange. This led to reflecting on ways that I could stimulate further exchanges resulting in a change of action- posting an entry from one of my blogs. This entry discussed my reflections related to my attendance at FETC.

This led to a discussion reflecting on recent conferences producing a short thread. It was interesting to see that those who posted had similar feelings to my experience with the Florida conference. This discussion served as a comparison of reflections to two conferences: FETC and TECA. This conversation was started by sharing an entry from one of my blogs related to my experience on the trade show floor in Florida. This discussion opened the door to critical reflection on the state of the corporate side of educational technology.

The third significant exchange was centered on a web presentation to be given by Gary Stager. This conversation drew a small number of participants initially. But like the other threads, failed to engage a significant number of members.

So what could I do to stimulate increased participation in the mentoring community? Here are a few items I listed in one of my blogs.

Live chat with the group

• Continue to invite others to join
• Increase frequency of personal posts from 3 to 5 per week.
• Post some personal blog material relating to how I see the future of educational technology now that I have been through over half of this program. This should have the possibility of really rocking the tables and prompting discussion.
• Host a TI exploration session involving live chat and threaded discussion to expose this group to more of this virtual environment.
• Invite guest speakers to the group for a live chat session.

Starting with the most accessible, I approached one of our teachers and discussed with him more about the use of Tapped In and this group room. We meet on a regular basis as he is the upper school comuter teacher. Both he and I have been working hard to radicalloy change the nature of technology offereinges and pedegogy used to teach technology in the upper school. Throughout the year, I had been passing along readings and we had been discussion them. In short, he and I have been in a mentoring relationshiop for the past two years.

I encouraged this teacher to post some reflections related to our latest changes in curriculum and some of the observations we had discussed over the year related to how students were responding. I walked him through working with Tapped In. This seems to have really paid off as he began to post several thoughts and later commented on how he enjoyed the process.

My hope was that others would respond to his posts as they were a new voice. I perposlly with-held my comments from his posts so that others might express their voices. Howevr, the room was still quite and as a result, I started to respond to some of his posts.

An interesting side to my direct interaction with this teacher has been his increased intraction with other teachers at the school- sharing his experiences in the classroom with the new curiculum.

I recently taught an introduction to blogging workshop where he and antoehr teacher had attended. I have had little interaction with this teacher throughout the year. However, during our conversations, it became apparent that the computer teacher had been sharing with the other teacher. Then just this past week, these two teachers collaborated by taking the day and showing the other teachersrs math classes a 3-D animation program- Maya 5. The following is the contests fo an e-mail message sent after this experience. This message was sent to the head of the math department as well as the head of the upper school.

Thanks for your time and expertise in showing my classes around the Maya 3-D program. They all enjoyed it and it ties very nicely to relevant uses of mathematics. This kind of integration is a great way to reach kids in an educationally meaningful way given the digital world we're in. We need to find a way to make this happen with regularity.

This is wonderful news as the Math Department head is someone that I have been trying to reach for some time and feel that there has been some real breakthroughs there opening the door to more of these types of exchanges in the future.

Other items on the list above that have been tried were reinviting some that had not joined the first time. This yielded one more member and this member has yet to participate in the dialogue of the group. I increased the frequency of my postings and added some more blog material. However, none of this has had much effect. I think the personal touch that I applied with the factulty member at my school was key and could be tried with other members in the group. A group from one of the schools that makes up three of the members of the TEC group visited our campus however I was not available on the day they came. However, they did spend much of the day with the upper school computer teacher mentioned earlier and by all accounts the visit went very well.

I believe that my next step will be to visit their school and spend a day there. This will also give me an opportunity to spend some personal time with them and their program. I believe that this might also prove to be important as I could then suggest some topics that they might be able to share with the group. This might also provide the opportunity to walk them through a personal tour of Tapped In increasing their comfort with the tool. I believe that I made an erronious assumption that since these were all technology educators, they would be familiar with this type of tool and communication.

For more information on this group, visit the group analysis pages.

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Second Group Room

I started a second room shortly after I presented a session at the March 2005 Texas Distance Learning Association’s conference. Invetations were sent out to the twelve particpants in my session. However, unlike the room I set up for TEC , this room was setup as an open room. This has proven to be a major difference between the two rooms.

Of the 12 invitations sent, 4 have joinded the room and only one has posted to the room. However, there aer several conversation going involving members that just wandered in and joined. There are very diverse backgrounds in the membership of this group.

This group has grwon faster and had more original posts than the first group. However, this group is very new and there is little that can be determined at this time. You can visit the group space for Teaching with the Web K-12 as it is an open room. If you are not able to get in, send me your Tapped In ID and I will send an invitation. I have had some difficulties with Pepperdine accounts as this room is outside of the Pepperdine campus. You can also get more information about the group by visiting the group analysis page.

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Third Group Room

Earlier this week, I sent to the school community Prensky's article on Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants as the first in a series of reading for the community to reflect on. I also said that I would be creating a way for all that are interested to share reflections on the readings. I did get a few emails back as a result of that reading. The following is a collection of these responses:

• Interesting article
• Thanks!
• Great article- thanks for sharing
• Thanks for the articles

However one of the most thought provoking and telling responses came from a senior faculty member. It is this type of response that I hope will lead to open dialogue on teaching and learning in our community. Here is the response:

Thanks for the article, Chris.  It's very thought provoking--and provocative.  My first reaction is somewhat defensive, I'm sure.  I can see how certain kinds of skill and knowledge based learning are very well suited to a digital approach.  Vocabulary and grammar games, for example, seem more attractive than flashcards and diagramming sentences on the chalkboard.  But the heart of what I do, wrestling with ideas in a piece of literature and questioning what it means to be human in a universe of mystery, doesn't seem to me to have much to do with computers.  I don't think much has changed since Sophocles, Jesus, and the Buddha.  How's that for an immigrant mentality?  Anyway, thanks for making me think.  Happy Wednesday.

There were also conversations that were impromptu as a result of sending out this article. One of the most substantive was with one of our librarians. We spent about 30 minutes discussing the need and desire for this type of dialogue in the community. And while we may disagree on the direction we should go as a result of these readings, the dialogue will force us to think about what we are doing and become reflective about our practices. This person was very excited about this new endeavor and wanted to know when we would be able to start discussing this article. I sent her a copy of the welcome page for the room to review as a critical friend. The following is her response:

Very well said! Just a few incidental points. Common practice, according to my graduate classes, is to use only one space between sentences for computer writing. Also in the 2nd paragraph, the opening sentence that begins with the introductory clause needs to modify a person or people (See your next sentence). So change the structure a bit so it looks like the sentence that begins "For professional growth, we."

  I'm excited about this!

I am also excited as this might be the beginning of what will be necessary to make real change in the community related to how we teach.

The room is now set up in Tapped In. I had to set it up under the account another account as I was out of group rooms in Tapped In. A member of one of the other groups volunteered their account for the room and it is now open for reflection. I sent out a couple of invitations to verify that everything is ready. I will be sending out specific instructions and invitations on April 11 th. The two posts that are there so far are very promising and it looks like we could have the beginning of some conversations. The trick will be moving them toward dialogue so that all members are truly listening to each other as we continue to learn.

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Final Words

What have I learned about group mentoring and mentoring at a distance?

• Mentoring is a relationship that can’t be forced.
• Group mentoring still requires the nurturing of relationships.
• Mentoring in the group has the ability to affect change outside the group.
• Mentoring takes time and can’t be rushed.
• You can’t assume that people in technology will be comfortable with a new technology even if it has been around for some time.
• Efforts spend building personal relationships build trust opening the door to honest exchanges
• I suspect that it is possible to over organize a group room providing a structure that might not feel comfortable to those new to the technology.
• It is possible to affect wider change by focusing on the most immediate changes in your self and with your mentees.