Professional social networks as a mentoring tool

[Ken Messersmith]

Connie and I have been talking about using social networks like this one to help support future teacher and beginning teachers. I have created a social network on Ning for our current students both graduate and undergraduate but haven't found a good way to make sure everyone gets a connection.
Connie also found an article talking about involving retired teachers in a supporting role for new and future teachers.
Any ideas about how we might do something like this?

[Connie Weber]

Ha! Did I make this forum complicated to follow, or what?!

We have responses to responses to responses...


It'll all get more clear if you go to the GROUP site, "Mentoring Program: Pilot for 09/10"

[Connie Weber]

Ready to get going; let's start really small, just a few dedicated/experienced teachers matched up with mentor/mentee relationships that seem like they'd be workable and productive. I volunteer to take four new (first through fifth year?) or aspiring teachers.
Where shall we put the signup list, and in what form? I've been thinking of various forms for it and keep coming back to use of a forum, just plain and simple. If you're interested in helping to shape this project and being a mentor or mentee (really the learning will go two ways, constantly) please go to the GROUP SITE listed above. Whew--I hope this works. Just need an effective start, using this school year to experiment with it.
PLEASE JOIN IN IF THE PROJECT IS APPEALING TO YOU--be a pioneer in the world of eMentoring.

[Jane Nordli Jessep]

Connie,
I do get a bit disoriented, obviously. But I posted a response to that April posting just now, August 20th. I would love to join the project about mentoring new teachers. It seems so related to what I do through WIDE, coaching TfU. I've also coached DI and MI and what else? I don't know. But if I can be of use please tap me.
Jane

[Jane Nordli Jessep]

Hello, Ken, and of course any and all who may stumble across this,
As an online coach I am very interested in how any internet networks can really help teachers in nurturing their teaching practices. I started a separate Ning for the study group I just coached through WIDE (harvard's gse professional development for teachers site)and so far there has been a tiny bit of action. I suspect that I will have to encourage conversation, bring up topics in much the same way that Connie et al do here.
Probably because the course I mostly coach has become a tad "product" oriented, my thinking is starting to shift. For a while I felt we were being too concrete with the teachers who participated in the courses. But now I see the value in the experience of creating something using the TfU framework, an effort which is supported by collegial conversation and the encouragement and ongoing feedback from the coach, invitation to think yet again from a different perspective how to deepen the work we create for students.
Now we here are not in a formal setting and our purposes are not those of a course, and yet, I wonder how we might tackle the smaller bore issues, projects in the works, ideas for lessons, the detail stuff of work here? Is that a bad idea? How can all the wonderful idea sharing that goes on here, the philosophizing, the great links to resources, the radical questions and thoughts be put to work for works in progress or in the initial stages of planning? Maybe that's just not what we need to be doing here. But don't you figure new and future teachers might like a place to bounce off ideas for real life needs, right in this moment?
Oh boy. It's hot here in southern Connecticut and I'm being good and have decided not to use my central air at all this summer. But it means I start fading fast when I spend any time on the computer.
jane