Friday, September 4, 2009

Your Opinion Matters! What Makes a Great Virtual Mentor?

Mentors and Mentees,

The success of the Global Learner project and Mentor Program is going to depend greatly on Virtual Mentoring. The questions of the day is What Makes a Great Virtual Mentor?

Please share your thoughts, tips and ideas on virtual mentoring. Have you been a virtual mentor or the recipient of virtual mentoring in the past? What has worked well? What challenges did you need to work through?

One thought - Mentors (and mentees) can share a small technology or lesson idea as a closure to e-mails (when appropriate). For example, yesterday my students loved taking pictures of their work. Later I will use their photographs to upload a classroom book to VoiceThread. Later this week we'll finish the book on the SmartBoard for the class to see.

I look forward to reading more ideas and thoughts on What Make a Great Virtual Mentor!

2 comments:

Dave Tarwater said...

Mentoring Teams,

First Kelly,thanks for this timely post. Indeed the success of the Global Learner project will be dependent in a large part to the value and depth of the mentoring process. I have received all 21 Mentee Logs for August, many teams are off to a good start. As we start our first full month of the 09-10 school year I know the upcoming logs will be even better.

I found an online resource that has some good talking points and suggestions for virutal mentoring. I will follow up this comment with a post containing more information and links. I urge all mentors and mentees to take a look at this resource.

Dave

Emily Taylor said...

I think the communication skills it takes to be a great virtual mentor are those it takes to be a great mentor plus knowledge of utilizing technology to communicate. Being open, friendly, a good listener, asking good questions, and providing many opportunities to collaborate are all important! Being able to bend time and provide more when needed is also a plus!