Ever wonder how we ended up with a grade system in schools and universities?

George Siemmens, who hosts the eLearning Space Blog, included this question in his email newsletter. It show how mentors were key to learning in the years befor our current system of public education was developed.

I think mentors are still key to learning, and we need to find a delivery system that helps more mentors connect with more kids, especially those living in big city neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, where the range of people who can mentor jobs, careers, college and other aspirations is limited.

In the field of elearning, I consider George to be one of my mentors and if have benefited greatly from the ideas received from him over the past few years.

Expanding the Network

I've been on-line since the mid 1990s and have connected with a wide range of creative thinkers.  One is George Siemmens, who writes the 3Learning Space blog. He wrote about the Tutor/Mentor Connection in this article (now only available via the Internet Archive).

In 2011,  Nicola Avery, who lives in the United Kingdom, saw that post, and began spending time learning about the T/MC by browsing our web sites.  She created a series of videos that she posted to the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum. A screen shot from the video section of the T/MC forum is shown below.  Unfortunately, these are no longer on line (as of 2018)

These videos described the T/MC OHATS site and shared this information with her own network in the UK. She created the video to help them understand how we're trying to document actions that would lead to our goal of helping more kids and volunteers connect in well organized, mentor-rich, programs.

While the video is a useful tool, you can learn more about OHATS here. What's really important is how this demonstrates how people from any part of the world can give time, talent and/or dollars to help T/MC do its work in Chicago, so they can borrow the ideas and use then where they are.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be writing articles showing how the past decade has impacted Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection and what we have accomplished despite the challenges. If you review this OHATS section you'll see charts that show actions we've taken each year since 2000 to achieve our mission.

I hope you'll recognize that if you invest in T/MC and increase the resources we have for the next 10 years, we can multiply the impact of what we're doing.

Future of Education. Uses of Technology.

I follow articles written by George Siemmens because they point me to many ideas that I've tried to apply in my own work. This article, titled Changing the System at a National Level, stimulate thinking about uses of technology in education. I encourage you to read and reflect.

Connected Learning Concept Map

I've used concept maps to describe strategies of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Here's one that illustrates the concepts of "connected learning". Thanks to George Siemmens of elearninspace.org for pointing this out to me.