Telementoring
A successful strategy for helping students develop their reading and writing competencies involves using the support of a "telementor," a knowledgeable
adult or senior student volunteer, to communicate electronically with a student about his or her work through email, conferencing systems, and by
telephone. The telementor can assist a student to carry out a long-term investigation of a topic of interest to the student. Through the process
of sustained conversation in writing and, sometimes, by phone, the student can benefit from the telementor's guidance to hone communication skills
as well as gather information regarding the topic they are jointly investigating. In framing questions to ask the telementor about different
aspects of the topic, the student practises writing for a real purpose and audience and receives written feedback, both about the topic and the
way the student communicated the questions and ideas under consideration. Students get opportunities to read material of real interest to them
through the recommendations the telementor makes about sources of information both through websites and print texts. In addition, the telementor
provides written material on the subject electronically in response to the questions and suggestions of the student.
Using telecommunications technology to develop and sustain mentoring relationships where face-to-face ones would be impractical provides opportunities
for ongoing reinforcement of student interest and motivation, which are not always available in the busy classroom where the teacher's attention must
be divided, of necessity, among many students. Of course, there is a significant advantage in having students linked to people outside the classroom,
in "the real world," who have vital information and ideas about students' areas of interest.
The essence of successful telementoring is the development of a reciprocal relationship … a two-way street with regard to learning. If a mentoring relationship
is working well, both the mentor and mentee will learn and draw rewards from the effort they invest. The sustained conversation between the telementor and the
student, carried out over weeks or months, is a very rich resource to foster the student's communicative competence. When engaged in an authentic investigation
of an intriguing subject with consistent adult assistance in pursuing questions about it, students are hugely motivated to read widely and write for a variety
of purposes. Of course, in some cases, the telementor-student relationship also can help students with specific problems and tasks and provide advice in related
areas such as academic choices or work/career guidance for older students.
The telementor relationship offers much more focused support for students' literacy development than "one-time-judging" or "ask an expert" models, where specific
feedback on student performance or a one-time answer to a one-time question is provided without the benefit of ongoing help for the student. In the telementoring
situation, there is an opportunity for the student to receive continuous advice and assistance and to be involved, with the help of an interested, knowledgeable
person, in reading and writing about genuinely open-ended ideas. Of course, there is considerable satisfaction for the adult telementor to watch a student's literacy
and intellectual competencies grow over time. As Dan, a PHD student in Physics, who acted as a telementor to three high school students studying black holes, put
it: "I really enjoyed it; for me it was great. I would be sitting down, coding all day, writing (computer) programs, and I would be able to take a half-hour or
an hour break every couple of days, to answer their emails, comment on their observations and look up something I wanted to learn about."
Telementoring allows the student to bring problems to the table either about the subject at hand or about how to read or write better. Literacy skills are improved
through the conversations the student and telementor have about the subject under study. The problems or essential questions belong to the student and the telementor
offers advice, guidance and support. It is up to the student to take it and carry it out and the student is motivated to do so in anticipation of the next conversation
with the telementor and by the intellectual contributions the telementor makes to the student's inquiry.
The telementor provides a fresh, responsive and critical audience for student work, which results in the following positive outcomes:
- It takes great advantage of students' unique personal interests and focuses on their specific stages of development in literacy skills.
- It avoids the limitations of a teacher's time and expertise, which can sometimes confine students' explorations to a narrow set of subjects.
- It allows students to pursue more than one topic of interest at a time by relating to more than one telementor.
- Students exert great effort to maintain their mentoring relationship over the course of their investigation and are motivated to continue.
- The discussions with telementors lead to more sophisticated arguments and presentations by students.
- Telementoring benefits both "good" and "weaker" students.
- Students anticipate possible objections to their work and learn to weigh perspectives.
- Telementoring provides students with a unique awareness of adult perspectives from the real world where reading widely and writing effectively matter.
Telementors facilitate students' best thinking and help them refine their growing understandings and the ways in which they read for information
and express their ideas.
Telementors help inexperienced investigators (students) avoid biting off more than they can chew or help by trimming a problem down to trivial proportions.
As one teacher who has set up many telementoring opportunities for her students said: "I always hope that by being involved with their telementors that my
students are going to be a little more critical of themselves because it is not me whom they've known for three years and they know that if they smile nicely
I won't be hard on them…They'll have somebody new they're presenting to who will give them a different kind of feedback than I've given them."
Fly Jones, Beau, Gilbert Valdez, Jeri Nowakowski, and Claudette Rasmussen.
Plugging In: Choosing and Using Educational Technology. Council
for Educational Development and Research. North Central Regional Educational
Laboratory, 1995. http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/edtalk/toc.htm
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