A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Telementoring Programs

Contact: Judi Harris

e-mail: jbharris@tenet.edu

Type: Resource to help teachers design and implement curriculum-based projects involving communication with subject matter experts.

Project Description: The Electronic Emissary Project has been on-line since February of 1993 and is based at the University of Texas at Austin, in the College of Education. The project helps teachers locate Internet-account holders with subject matter expertise relevant to their curricula who are willing to volunteer some of their time to share their knowledge via e-mail. The Emissary's online facilitators then help teachers plan, coordinate, and evaluate curriculum-based telementoring. Students have the opportunity to communicate directly with subject matter experts from all over the world. For example, fifth grade students in Amarillo, Texas communicated with a researcher from AT&T Bell Laboratories about sailing and celestial navigation. The subject matter expert in this team answered questions and suggested simple experiments for the students to try to help them understand the information that he was communicating.

Contact: Karen Ferneding Lenert, Project Manager

e-mail: Karen_Ferneding@teachnet.edb.utexas.edu

University of Texas at Austin, College of Education

Web Site: http://www.tapr.org/4d/infosme.html

Type: Resource for subject knowledge to supplement classroom activities

Project Description: The Electronic Mentoring project is one of several learning projects coordinated under the umbrella of the Four Directions Project. This project endeavors to use telecommunications to enable Native American children who reside in remote, rural areas to have access to information resources and assistance that may not otherwise be made available to these children; provide role models for Native American children and help develop important learning relationships; and to provide an on-line community of learners dedicated to facilitating a deep appreciation and understanding of Native American cultures, traditions and practices. A successful telementoring project requires the mentor to engage in two ongoing conversations: 1) an inquiry-based learning exchange between the mentor and the students about the curriculum topic germane to the mentor's area of knowledge and expertise; and 2) an interchange between the mentor and the teacher, who collaboratively coordinate the activity. The teacher and mentor must communicate for approximately two weeks before the mentor begins communicating with his or her students. Correspondence must take place at least three times a week.

Contact: David Neils

e-mail: david_neils@hp.com

Web Site: http://mentor.external.hp.com
As of June 1998: http://www.telementor.org

Type: One-on-one sustained mentor relationship

Project Description: In 1996-97, the Hewlett Packard E-mail Mentor Program provided 1500 one-on-one mentor relationships between HP employees and 5th - 12th grade students in order to motivate students to excel in math and science. Students received assistance and encouragement in pursuing their unique interests while gaining critical math, science, communication and problem-solving skills. Mentors work with individual students on teacher-assigned projects that integrate the mentoring program into the school's curriculum and are designed to meet student needs. Projects vary from helping students develop classroom math or science-related research projects, to exploring math or science careers, to working on weekly math problems. HP employees also help students develop critical skills to pursue their unique interests in a professional, fun, and efficient way.

Contact: Louis Gomez

Phone: 847-467-2821

Web Site: http://typhoon.covis.nwu.edu/info/covis-info.html

Type: One mentor to one student team, sustained mentor relationship

Project Description: The Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) Project involves thousands of students, more than a hundred teachers, and dozens of researchers and scientists, working to improve science education in middle and high schools. The hands-on science learning employs a broad range of communication and collaboration technologies, including telementoring. CoVis seeks to recruit science experts from academia and industry who are willing to volunteer time to assist CoVis students with their projects. The WWW-based CoVis Mentor Database enables teachers to match these volunteers with teams in their classrooms for mentoring relationships spanning weeks or months. Mentors can help students develop interesting scientific questions, clarify and refine their project questions, locate books, periodicals, and Internet data relevant to their investigations, and analyze data in a useful way. Through analyses of electronic mentor/mentee correspondence, students' work, and interviews with mentors, mentees and teachers, CoVis will examine the efficacy and sustainability of volunteer mentoring over the Internet.

Contact: e-mail: goldmame@bc.edu

Web Site: http://iss.ocmboces.org

Type: Ongoing feedback on student work by mentors

Project Description: Mentor Center provides students with a guided process for obtaining feedback from mentors. Mentors from outside a school can review student work easily and offer constructive comments. Mentor Center allows for several variations of relationships: one student working with one mentor, one student working with several mentors, or several students working with one mentor. Once assigned a mentor, the student pastes his/her written work into a form on the web; an automatically sent e-mail message notifies the mentor (or mentors) that the "Net Pal's" work is waiting for him/her to read and includes the Web Page address where the student's writing is located. The mentor accesses the web page where the student's work and a feedback form are posted. The mentor enters constructive comments which are automatically returned, either to the student or teacher. For example, in Concord, New Hampshire, lawyers in a local law firm mentor 6th grade students in writing. At ALL School in Worcester, Massachusetts, employees of the Fleet Bank are mentoring middle and high school students in a business apprenticeship program.

Contact: Everett Bake, Project Director or Joan Williams, Executive Director

Pan-Educational Institute

e-mail: ebake@pei.edu

Web: http://www.pei.edu/pei/project/testbed/testbd2.html

Web Site: http://nsn.bbn.com/telementor_wrkshp/tmlink.html

Type: One mentor to one student team, sustained mentor elationship

Project Description: The National Schools Network Testbed project creates mentoring relationships between a team of 4-5 students and a community mentor who has expertise and interest in a selected project. Trained mentors and students must commit to communicating for at least two hours each week via e-mail for at least one semester. Mentors become involved with a school as a partner in designing meaningful curricular activities. Students have opportunities to explore a world of available resources and model skills used in professional settings to respond to actual problems faced by businesses and communities. For example, a retired postal worker served as a mentor who worked with her team to determine the most time-efficient post office networks serving populations of over 50,000 in a ten state area.

Contact: Kenneth E. Barner, Principal Investigator

Phone: 302-831-6937

e-mail: barner@asel.udel.edu or barner@ee.udel.edu

Web Site: http://www.ece.udel.edu/InfoAccess/programs/telementoring/intro.html

Type: One-on-one sustained mentor relationship

Project Description: The Science, Engineering, and Math (SEM) Telementoring Program, supports Internet- based, one-on-one mentor relationships between students with disabilities and volunteer mentors from the Applied Science and Engineering Laboratories (ASEL) at the University of Delaware. In order to encourage students to pursue and remain in SEM professions, mentors describe their own personal experiences, challenge students with new ideas and opportunities, advise students on course work, provide new academic, business or personal contacts, and discuss student problems, offering potential solutions.

Contact: Ed Friedman, Beth McGrath

Phone: 201-216-5375

e-mail: friedman@stevens-tech.edu, bmcgrath@stevens-tech.edu

Contact: Patricia Holahan, researcher

Phone: 201-216-8991

e-mail: pholahan@stevens-tech.edu

Web Site: None

Type: Resource for subject knowledge to supplement classroom activities

Project Description: Launched in the spring of 1997, the project began its pilot run in the fall of 1997. The project will individually match nine NASA engineers/scientists with a New Jersey teacher and his/ her eighth or ninth grade classroom in Jersey City, Hoboken and Union City. Trained mentors will serve as advisors to the teacher and students as they proceed through a structured curriculum on meteorology. The program involves five all-day hands-on workshops in which teachers learn about meteorology and the use of the Internet-based resources for studying meteorology, such as NASA satellite images. Teachers and mentors begin communicating on science and career-related topics of mutual interest via desktop videoconferencing. During the school term, five additional hands-on workshops are scheduled. The curriculum, based on materials from the CoVis project and BlueSky program, is primarily data-centered and project-oriented, emphasizing discovery by exploration. The program provides opportunities for students to ask mentors questions, via e-mail, which will help students in their understanding of math and science as well as provide students with a role model. In the pilot program, each mentor is of Hispanic background and the students of the pilot classrooms are primarily Hispanic. The pilot program also features a research component which will provide a form of evaluation/assessment. In developing the project, literature by Judi Harris of the Electronic Emissary was used.

Contact: Dorothy Bennett

e-mail: tmeade@edc.org (to the attention of Dorothy Bennett)

Web Site: http://www.edc.org/CCT/telementoring/docs/projectg.html

Type: One-on-one sustained mentor relationship

Project Description: The Telementoring Young Women in Science, Engineering, and Computing project, through on-line one-on-one mentor relationships, encourages young women to explore and achieve in the fields of science, engineering and computing by providing sustained support from and communication with female professionals. Mentors, after undergoing two weeks of on-line training, provide students with opportunities to discuss the content of their classes and develop strategies for dealing with difficult subject matter and situations. Mentors also provide guidance and support to help young women make decisions about pursuing courses and careers in science, engineering, computing and related fields. Over three years, the project has reached 19 schools in six states. The project is supported by the Educational Development Center and Center for Children and Technology and is funded by the National Science Foundation.

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