e-mentorship: Blogs and Mentoring (Part 1)
I've been thinking a lot about blogs in the classroom and how blogs can be used to help meet not only the academic needs of students, but also the social-emotional needs of our kids. Recently, I was reminded of the value of mentorship when a professor gave me some sage advice inpspiring me to pursue my dreams in spite of a couple road blocks. Thus, mentors can help one dream bigger dreams than one thought possible. Reflecting, it is my contention that mentorship is part of the role of teaching...and I believe any good teacher worth his or her salt will tell you that.
Hence, I wonder couldn't blogs be a valuable venue for mentorship? Thus, could we use the blogospere to encourage peer and/or multi-age mentorships within our schools? It seems all very Vygotskian, for, blogs could scaffold learning both academically as well as social-emotional. For example, I was thinking in my own classroom I could have my eighth graders mentor my sixth graders adjustment to middle school life at the beginning of every school year. As a part of the lesson I would be modeling the attributes leadership and mentorship to my eighth graders as they embark on learning to mentor a new middle school cohort.
Additionally, when searching on-line for mentorship and blogs I also came across a couple interesting blog sites. For example, a veteran teacher was mentoring a first year teacher (which I really liked), a mommie-to-be mentorship blog, and a youth minister's mentorship blog...
...to be continued...
Cybermentoring: An Online Literacy Project in Teacher Education
Article by Dr. Paula Boxie, Miami University, Ohio
http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A4976.cfm
Collaboratories: Working Together on the Web
http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/jaal/9-01_Column/
posted by Mechelle De Craene @ 6:08 PM
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