Be Like Terry. Share My Resources

I started participating in cMOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) around 2011 and connected with a group of educations in a #CLMOOC event in early 2013.  I've built relationships with several people in that group in the years since and pointed to them in stories I've posted on this blog. 

One of those is Terry Elliott, a retired college professor from Western Kentucky.  I did a search on his blog today for "tutormentor" and the image below shows the result. You can view that page here. 

I hope you'll read through the article Terry wrote. He offers his  own perspective on the work I've been doing.  That's the goal.  Each person has a different lived experience, based on where they live and what their life journey has been.  Each person has a different network of people they learn from and influence.

If we're going to do better at helping kids out of poverty and distressed conditions, we need many, many more people involved.

If you skim through the CLMOOC articles I've posted, you'll see that a few others have also mentioned my work often on their blogs.  I appreciate that. It's what I hope many will do.

Here's an article I posted in 2015, encouraging others to share my articles, and those of each other, in an on-going effort to build attention and draw resources to support tutor, mentor and learning programs that help kids in high poverty places move through school and into adult lives, with jobs and careers that enable them to raise their own kids free of poverty.

Thank you Terry and others who share these ideas.  

What if students in every city did this?

Today as I strolled through my social media platforms I came across a graphic created by Kevin Hodgson, from the #clmooc group.  You can see it in this blog article. 

I did my own remix, adding a New Year's wish. See it below.

The text in Kevin's graphic reads "We need to think differently about our culture. This is not simply augmenting our experience with technology. Claim  your space. Review. Remix. Make Meaning. Make Art. Damnit!"

I added a photo of me at my computer, with a map story on the screen. Then a photo of two of our interns from South Korea, looking at my articles and creating their own remix, their own interpretations.

The https://michaelcnt.blogspot.com/ blog was created in 2006 by an intern from Hong Kong and I've used it since then to share the work interns were doing. 

My message was "What if... this (the student sitting at the desk in Kevin's graphic) were students sharing ideas from http://tutormentor.blogspot.com?)

That has been a message I've shared over and over for the past 16+ years. Youth from every part of the world could be writing articles similar to what I've been writing, focused on using information libraries to "review" and "reflect" and focus on strategies that would make life better for people living in areas of concentrated poverty.

At every high school, college, faith institution and even non-school program in the USA (and the world) there could be a blog sharing student work generated over many years, attempting to build greater and more consistent attention and involvement in solving deeply entrenched, complex problems.  

In a few weeks I'm going to be writing an article showing my efforts since 1993 to build strategic alliances with local and global universities, which would lead to students doing the research and writing that I dream of.  

Below is a 2010 example of what I hope for.

This is one of five blogs created by students from DePaul University, who were part of an Explore Chicago class that studied different neighborhoods to determine the need for, and the availability of, tutor/mentor programs in different parts of the city.  This article has links to the 2010 blogs. This 2009 article describes the launch of the partnership with Tutor/Mentor Connection.

It was a great start, but did not last beyond 2010 and did not extend into other parts of the student learning curriculum at DePaul.   Yet, it is an example of what's possible.

I recognize that helping kids in high poverty areas is one huge issue that needs more consistent involvement, but that there are many other complex problems that need to be addressed.  Below is a concept map showing multiple issues.

Imagine having a concept map like this on a college website, where each node opened to a page where student blogs, videos, podcasts, etc. were aggregated over many years, focusing on a specific issue.  Such a strategy could appeal to a wide sector of the student body and could engage alumni as well.

Maybe someone is already doing this.  In fact, I know that many colleges and universities have student research and reflection programs, which annually produce reflections on problems and proposed solutions.  However, I don't have links to any who are aggregating these projects, by category, over multiple years, creating a knowledge base that alumni and others can use to actually solve the problems students are identifying.

Share your links in the comment section if you know of anyone doing this. 

Thank you for reading.  Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter (x), Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Threads.  Find my links on this page.

Thank you to those who supported the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC with a gift to my 77th birthday campaign. 

If you want to help me continue this work in 2024 consider a gift to the FundT/MI campaign.

Join the October Write-Out

I saw the post below by my friend Kevin Hodgson about the October Write-Out which is starting this week.

The link to the post is here, and the link to the Write-Out prompts is here

Kevin is part of the #clmooc group of educators that I have been networking with since 2013.  I've pointed to his blog often from my articles because of how he shares ideas that educators as well as non-school tutor, mentor and learning program staff, students and volunteers can use.

Here's a link to the stories he has posted this year, and in past years about the National Write-Out which is a partnership with the National Park Service. 

Since many volunteers have just been introduced to the students they will work with for the coming school year, this writing activity is a great way for them to get to know each others.  It's not too late to join the activities.  Furthermore, the archives will always be available for use throughout the year. 

I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program from 1975 to 2011 and several former volunteers have made donations over the past 12 years to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  I received a generous gift today from Kathy Cheevers, who was a volunteer in the 1980s!  Thank you.

For those who want to help, here is the link to my FundT/MI page. 

Participation in on-line learning groups

Below is a map created to show where participants in the current #ETMOOC2 study of Artificial Intelligence are coming from. View it at this link. 

I first connected with this group in 2013 and have stayed connected for the past 10 years, via this and another group that uses #clmooc as it's hashtag.  

Below is an article I wrote in 2020, drawing from previous articles written about cMOOCs and on-line learning in the past 10 years. 

--- start 2020 article ----

See article

Last week I used the graphic at the right in an article about systems thinking. After writing it I shared it on Linkedin and so far it's recorded 3593 views and some great comments.

Yesterday I was updating links in my web library and found several that I added in 2013 while I was participating in the Education, Technology MOOC, or #ETMOOC.  Then a couple of hours later I was mentioned in a Tweet by Alan Levine, talking about the 2013 ETMOOC.

This prompted me to do a search for ETMOOC to see what I've posted about it. The first article on the list was from January 22, 2013, titled "Connected Learning. Collective Action".

I going to re-post that article here, with just a few updates and annotations, showing that the vision I had in 2013, and 20 years before that, is still live and kicking during Covid19 in 2020.

---- start of article ----

ETMOOC participants 2013

I’m one of more than 1600 people who have joined the Education Technology Mooc (#ETMOOC) since last Monday. I’ll be participating in the National Mentoring Summit in Washington, DC this Thursday and Friday where more than 500 people will be connected in the same building and for the same purpose.

This article aims to tie the two events together.

I have participated in several ETMOOC events since last Monday, including a session Sunday morning hosted by Dave Cormier, one of the first people to use the term MOOC. Visit this page to find the recording of Dave’s session, along with additional links to his ideas. (The site I originally pointed to is no longer on-line, but click here to read blogs by Dave, from 2006 till 2020) 

As part of the #ETMOOC, participants have written more than 850 blog articles and posted over 1000 Tweets. Most of these have focused on how MOOCs enable personal learning and introduce members and their ideas to each other. You can follow what you want. You can spend as much time reading blogs and taking part in live sessions as you want. You can share your own ideas and you can interact with others. Each participant controls their own learning experience. You can follow some of the blogs at this link.

This is complex problem
that I've focused on.

I’m interested in going beyond personal learning. My goal is to help build and sustain networks that use their learning, and the network, to innovate new ways to solve complex problems.

The ETMOOC network analysis map shows “who’s involved” based on history of participation. If you’ve followed previous articles on this blog you can see how I’ve been trying to map participation in Tutor/Mentor Conferences, the Ning group, and my Facebook and Linked in groups.

You’ll see how I focus on actions that grow the network, while growing the composition of the network at the same time. If we agree that It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, we need to get the business community strategically involved.

With this post I hope to stimulate a couple of different streams of thought.

1) How do we connect people participating in MOOCs with places where they become volunteers, donors, leaders who work together to solve complex social problems? (I'm still trying to do  this.)

2) How do we know if people from all sectors – e.g. business, philanthropy, government, community, religion, youth, etc. – are participating in our MOOCs or community of practice? (We still don't know, and I can't find many who are trying to find out.)

When I started the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 I could have just focused on sharing ideas I had developed since 1975 when I first started leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago. However, I did something different. I made a commitment to try to collect, organize and share experiences of others involved in this work. My goal was to collect “all that was known” about volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring, where such programs are needed, why they are needed, what it takes for them to have long term impact, how to support them, how to connect business and philanthropy to them, etc. This represents a vast library of knowledge and literally millions of people.

If you read the systems thinking article I wrote last week you can see this same thought. 

I’ve used Concept Maps to diagram my strategies, and the sections of my library. The diagram below shows the research section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection links library.

Open link to see current version of this cMap

If you click on any of the nodes you’ll go to a specific section of the web library which points to a variety of web sites with information related to that topic. Many of the web sites I point to have similar lists of web sites they point to. The collective knowledge that this represents is constantly expanding.

Every conversation uncovers
new ideas.

Every time I’m in a conversation, conference, or MOOC, I add sites I’m interested in to the library, which makes them immediately available to anyone else who visits the site. There’s an entire section of links in the Library to Knowledge Management articles, which is what I’m doing.

2020 --- I've been thinking about how to describe this lately. How many times are you in a conversation and someone says "Do you know about this or that piece of information?" It could be really valuable. Not just to me, but to others. Most of the time you leave the conversation and the information shared is lost. I've made a habit of taking notes, then adding links to what we talked about to the web library, so others could learn from it, too.

I realize I’ll never have “all that is known” but with 2000+ links, the library offers a massive pool of content for that could support a variety of MOOCs (and/or systems thinking projects).

By participating in ETMOOC and events like the Mentor Summit I hope to connect with others who will help with this process. I hope to find partners who will help organize future “tutor/mentor” MOOCs that draw people from the many different sites in my library into an on-line community that offers all of the personal learning and relationship building values that Dave Comier is describing in his presentation.

This is still not happening.

I hope to focus on strategies and actions that make mentor-rich programs available in more of the neighborhoods where they are most needed.

Tutor/Mentor Conference map

As that is happening, network analysis can show who’s participating and geographic maps can show what parts of the geography are represented. Such maps could demonstrate the growth of the network over a period of years, while enabling people from different sections of the library and/or different parts of the country or a big city like Chicago, to connect more easily with each other.

View articles
w this map. 

In one of the ETMOOC blogs I read last week the author told of how he feels others do a much better job of communicating ideas than he does. Then one day someone said “gee that’s really unique”.

I think others can communicate what I’m describing far better than I can. That’s one role interns have been taking. You can see some of their work here.

2020 - As people reach out and ask how can I help I invite them to read my blog articles, then create their own blog, or video, to share their  understanding of what I'm saying. Here's a concept map where I aggregate links to blogs where some people are doing that.

In this 2020 article I encourage students to take on this role, while doing learning from home. Any of the educators who I've met via cMOOCs could engage some of their students in this process, focusing on their own communities, not Chicago (unless they live in this area).

I hope that through the MOOCs and conferences I attend I’ll not only find people who share the same vision and strategy, but who will use their talent to help communicate these ideas in more creative, thoughtful and meaningful ways.

I’ll write more about this tomorrow before I head to the airport. I think this post is long enough already.

----- end rewrite of 2013 article -----

View at this link

Following the ETMOOC in 2013 I joined the CLMOOC and that has continued each year since then.  I've posted 61 articles that point to my participation in the CLMOOC including this article where I show my learning journey.

At the left is the most recent example of how we spark creativity among each other. I had posted an article about network building and Wendy Taleo from Australia included it in a visual poem she was working on with several others. See it here.  I circled where I show up on her journey map.

2020 EndPoverty Summit
in Chicago

At the right is a photo that shows participants at an EndPoverty Summit held in Chicago before Covid19 and hosted by Mayor Lightfoot. I wrote about it here and asked why we can't get non-profit youth program leaders, funders, researchers, volunteers and business partners....and youth/alumni, into on-going cMOOC type on-line conversations.

Covid19 has changed how people connect and communicate. #LearnAtHome and #WorkatHome are now becoming habits. Maybe it's time to make a new push to bring the youth and workforce development ecosystem into more integrated cMOOC-like engagement. 

For that to happen one or more visible leaders needs to step forward and champion the vision. And fund the work.

Today I was one of nearly 100 in a ZOOM meeting led by the Mayor's MyChiMyFuture youth initiative. The Mayor joined in for a few minutes. Maybe someone from that planning team will read this and begin to imagine ways to connect participants in this ecosystem, the same way the ETMOOC and CLMOOC people have been connecting and sharing ideas for many years.

Maybe someone will understand the need to  be mapping participation to show who's there, and who's missing.

---- end 2020 article ----

So far not too many people have added themselves to the #ETMOOC2 participation map.  And I'm not finding a discussion aimed at reaching more people, especially people of color and from under-represented sectors.  Here's the #ETMOOC2 website.  Take a look. There are lots of resources, and many examples of how learning groups can connect and share ideas.

If you're reading this and you want to help, create your own version of my concept maps, PDF essays and blog articles, and share them with your own network, in your own city or country. Maybe you'll be the one that some big shots listen to and provide the funds to do this work.

Connect with me on these social media channels.

If you can, make a contribution to help me pay the bills. Visit this page to use the PayPal button.  

How do we know when we are "there"?

Last night I had a detailed dream about the planning needed to solve complex problems.  I wish I had my brain plugged into some type of Artificial Intelligence that could capture such dreams, and put them into text and graphic articles.   Alas. I don't.

In the past few blog articles I've pointed to the #ETMOOC2 on-line learning community, which is digging deeper into AI and ChatGPT.  In past years I've posted dozens of articles showing the value of online learning groups like #CLMOOC and #ETMOOC, with the goal that people working in the non-school youth development, tutor and mentor ecosystem might create similar on-going learning networks.  

The goal would be "How can we do this better?" or how can we reach more k-12 kids with better programs that keep them safe and help them move through school and into adult lives where they can raise their own kids free of poverty?

Then, this morning, I thought of a graphic that I had created several years ago that shows steps in the journey from "here" to "there", or, "where we are now" to "where we want to be in the future".  I found an article and video that I wrote in 2017.  I'm re-posting it below.

---- start 2017 article ----

On Wednesday I posted an article about an on-line digital citizenship conversation, under the hashtag #digciz. I included a graphic from Kevin Hodgson's blog. Today I read another article from Kevin's blog, with a list of  issues he is interested in.

Here to There Steps

That prompted me to look at some past articles I'd written, including this one titled "Social Media and Civic Engagement" where I point to another article by Kevin. In that article I also included this graphic.

Each text box on this graphic represents an issue that I feel needs to be part of any discussion of local-global problems and solutions.  To me civic engagement is not just talking about who gets elected. It's talking to other people about ways we can use our own time, talent and dollars, as well as our votes, to bring solutions to some of those problems.

I created this graphic earlier this year to illustrate how much of our daily attention seems to be focused on what the new President of the US is doing, and what I and others should be doing to resist or elect different people to represent us.

However, the goal was to also show that we still need to provide daily attention to the problems we can solve, if we can just get more people to connect and work together, and more people to think creatively about ways they apply their time, talent and dollars.

In my article I wrote

I'm not just trying to motivate people to read and reflect. I'm trying to motivate on-going investments of time, talent and dollars to support the growth of youth serving organizations that help kids move through school and into jobs.

Thus, my list of topics is focused on problem solving, not just creating on-line discussions and learning opportunities.

I wasn't sure how to communicate what was shown on the graphic, so I decided to put the Lumin5 tool to a new test. Below is the video that I created.



Since 2005 interns have been looking at graphics and blog articles I've created and have then created their own interpretations, which I show here.  

I think one thing educators and leaders of non-school tutor/mentor programs could do is to encourage youth to look at articles like mine, Kevin's and the #digciz community, then build their own interpretations and share them on various social media platforms. Others could do this, too.

For instance, take a look at the visualizations created during this Sketch50 event.   Or look at the ideas Terry Elliott captured in the Storify on his blog.

There are thousands of people creating visualizations daily. I'd like to focus some continuously on the graphics and ideas I've been sharing for the past 20 years in an effort to bring more people and resources to efforts that make mentor-rich school and non-school learning and youth development opportunities available to k-12 youth in every high poverty area of the country.

What do you think? Are your students doing this?

---- end 2017 article ----

I really hope you'll look at the video.  I expand upon the thinking needed, and the resources, and timeframe, to help kids move through school and into adult lives.  

Then look at the structure of the #ETMOOC2 event. It connects people from around the world, on many platforms, in on-going learning about AI and ChatGPT.  This is a model that others could  use in drawing people together to solve complex problems.

YOU could be the person or organization in your community that is building this type of community, or borrowing from #ETMOOC2 to expand what you're already doing.

I hope you'll share this and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Mastodon (see links here). 

And, if you're able, send a small contribution to help me fund the work I'm doing. Click here to learn more. 

Create a WebQuest to learn AI tools

I've been exploring Artificial Intelligence and ways to use tools like ChatGPT with educator friends who I met via the 2013 ETMOOC and CLMOOC on-line events.  This month we're using #ETMOOC2 as a hashtag that connects us and out ideas on Twitter.  

Today I saw a Tweet from Kevin Hodgson, showing a project he developed using AI tools.

An Interactive Text Game Of Poetry: Haiku Quest By ChatGPT https://t.co/F27CDagy2h Kevin's Meandering Mind #clmooc #etmooc2 #literacies #poetry #smallpoems pic.twitter.com/G6pvJgjkUI

— KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) April 19, 2023

I've been inspired by ideas Kevin has been sharing for the past 10 years. Skim some of these posts to see a few that I've referred to.  Kevin uses Twitter to share his thoughts and his blog to show his ideas in greater detail. I followed the link in today's Tweet to this article.   Then I went to the Twine tutorial that he pointed to. 

I think I could learn to use Twine, but that would not do much to attract more viewers to my websites and strategies. 

So how do I apply these tools to help people better understand and apply the ideas I've been sharing on this blog since 2005? 

In 2010 a volunteer who was looking at the resources of the Tutor/Mentor Connection wrote a blog article titled "Thinking like Google", in which he compared the T/MC to Google. He wrote,

It occurred to me that this forum is essentially modeled on a similar format as Google's. Tutormentorconnection.ning.com a) looks for information, or content, and people relevant to the cause of tutoring and mentoring; b) organizes, analyzes, and archives that information for future reference; and c) utilizes those references for targeted advertising campaigns, social networking, grant-writing, and the like. Even more to the point, this forum is a way of attempting to grow the idea of tutoring and mentoring to scale, or to a point where it "tips".

I've built a huge web library and I've created a variety of PDF essays over the past 28 years that are intended to help people learn ways to support the growth of volunteer-based tutoring, mentoring and learning programs in high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and other places. While I point to these via email newsletters and social media, I've been looking for new ways to introduce these concepts.

How about a WebQuest?  How might I motivate students and adults to take Michael's advice and begin to journey through my web library, and as they do, share what they are learning with people in their own network, so they begin their own journey through this information.

How might they use some of the ideas and Artificial Intelligence tools that Kevin and others are sharing? 

Several years ago I began to learn about WebQuest and I created an animation to introduce this concept. You can view it on YouTube

Here are a couple of other animations introducing students to a web quest.

Making a map, class assignment, animation.

Doing a web quest.

Interns from various colleges in the US and Asia were on this journey for short bursts of time every year between 2006 and 2015.  I asked them to look at ideas I was sharing and then create their own interpretations. 

In 2015 I asked one intern to look at the "learning path" concept map that I show below. It was intended to help people learn about the ideas and resources I was sharing.

This video shows what was created (first using Prezi, then recorded for YouTube). 

Below is another concept map that shows how people can  use the information I've been aggregating.

I wrote about this "information flow" in this article.

For the past 20 years, I've been updating the links on the web library so all are working, and I keep adding new links. I also keep adding new blog articles here, here and here. Some of the articles written 10-15 years ago are as relevant today as they were then, so while it's important that you subscribe and follow new articles, it's also important that you visit the past and read some of those articles.

learning communities
focused on specific geography

Here's a visualization done by one of our past interns that illustrates the goal of supporting groups of learners in many sectors, who each look at maps to determine where youth and families need more help, and what programs are already operating in those areas.....who need constant support to constantly improve and stay available.

The links in the web library point to more than 200 youth serving programs in Chicago and others around the country. They point to research articles and to business and foundation web sites.  They represent a large ocean of ideas you can use to help programs grow, by borrowing good ideas already working in different places, rather than by starting from scratch on an on-going basis.

Most of the links in the web library point to other people's ideas, not my own. This emphasizes the purpose of the library for myself, and others. We can do more by borrowing ideas from others than from constantly starting from the beginning.

However, some links point to my own ideas, which I've communicated with illustrated presentations which you can find in my blogs, and on this page and in libraries at Scribd.com and SlideShare.

Intern projects from 2004-2015

Students from around the world could be looking at the web library, and my articles, and could be using Artificial Intelligence and other tools to create their own presentations to draw adults and other students from their own community into this information, and into actions that lead to the growth of more programs in more places that help kids move through school and into careers.  Visit this page and see how past interns working with me in Chicago have already been doing this.

Pages like mine could be hosted on the website of every college, high school and middle school, showing work their own students have done to visualize solutions to complex local and global problems.

Why is this important?  The graphic below says "how can we do this better?"

If you ask ChatGPT tell you about challenges facing kids in high poverty areas it would show you some of the reasons we need to be doing better at helping them.  That's why this is important.

If you're hosting a web library, and creating visualized articles to motivate people to visit your library and support youth serving organizations in your community, please share your links so others can learn from you. If you're interested in exploring this idea with me, let's connect. 

Find me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram and Mastodon, too. 

Thank you from my network!

I scroll through all of my social media pages every morning and today on Twitter I found a message from Kevin Hodgson, who I met via the #clmooc community of educators.  I hope you'll listen to it.  click here

Keven models what I've encourage others to do. He reads posts I share on Twitter, reads posts on the Tutor/Mentor blogs, and creates stories about the work I'm doing that he shares with others.

And he has visited this page and sent annual contributions!  

I've used the concept map shown below for several years to point to articles written by Kevin and others about the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and the work I'm doing.  

I encourage others to "be like Kevin".  Help others find and use the ideas I've been sharing, to help build and sustain volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs reaching kids living in high poverty areas of Chicago and other places.  

Share your stories with me and I'll add them to the concept map!  

I'll be 76 on December 19th.  Please make a contribution and help me celebrate....and keep doing this work in 2023!

Or contributed at the "Fund T/MI" page.  click here

Connecting like #CLMOOC

Here's a post that I saw today on Twitter.

Thanks Kevin. You and others in #clmooc and #rhizo14 helped spark all sorts of creativity which led to this visual art. Firstly digital https://t.co/6sk0Sl2BPu and then analogue https://t.co/mKDIkQI8z5 I wouldn’t be sharing this without you all. You helped me discover my voice. pic.twitter.com/otxZOOYGkJ

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 21, 2021

What I liked about this is that Simon Ensor (who teaches in France) points to 2014 and 2018 articles to show how the educators in the Connected Learning cMOOC (#clmooc) have influenced his current work. 

I've used this graphic in the past to show major networks that I'm part of. This includes extended family, Illinois Wesleyan Acacia Fraternity current and alumni members, youth and volunteers from the Chicago tutor/mentor programs I led from 1975 to 2011, people in other programs, foundations, universities I've met via the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, social entrepreneurs from the USA, Europe, Asia, Africa, and others.

This PDF from 2012 shows my networks and my goal of growing the network and nudging it to encourage more people to duplicate my actions in trying to help tutor/mentor programs grow in more places. 

While I use Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, I've not succeeded in drawing people from my network together in on-going interactions where they help each other the way the educators in the #clmooc do.  

Between May of 1994 and May of 2015 I hosted Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences in Chicago, which brought together people from the tutor/mentor program ecosystem.  You can read conference goals, on this page. 

And you can view participation maps on this page. 

However, these did not attract people from my college or family network, nor many current and former students and volunteers from the tutor/mentor programs I led. Furthermore, I've not been able to host a conference since 2015.

And, they did not draw together leaders from business, politics, philanthropy and other sectors, visualized in this concept map.  All of these people need to be interacting on an on-going basis in order to innovate solutions that help bring hope and opportunity to people in high poverty, and reduce racial injustice, segregation, violence and inequality.

So social media is the only place where people from different places can connect in on-going relationship building the ways the #clmooc educators are doing. 

I encourage you to browse some of the articles on this blog, tagged #clmooc, which show my growing participation in their network since first meeting them in 2013.   Then browse the Twitter feed for the #clmooc group and see live interactions. You can scroll back as far as you wish. 

My goal is that people from different parts of my network get to know and support each other, in many of the same ways as the people in the #clmooc network have done.  

I point to Twitter because while the #clmooc group is on Facebook (it started on Google+) I find the most interaction on Twitter.   

I'm there @tutormentorteam.  Join me.

Strong headwinds swamp efforts to help kids in poverty areas

 I created the graphic below after reading this blog article by Terry Elliott. 

In Terry's article, he points to essay by Venkatesh Rao, titled “Coordination Headwinds”.   And that essay points to a  management presentation titled Coordination Headwind by Stripe’s head of strategy, Alex Komoroske. That's where I got the cyclone graphic.

It was in the solutions section of Alex's slide deck, at the end of the presentations.  After seeing so many reasons why projects fail, especially as they involve more people and more ambitious goals, I can understand why America has not solved its racial wealth gap, inequality, structural racism, or urban violence problems, after many decades of attention being given to them.  

Here's another graphic highlighting the graphics to the left and right of the cyclone.  This is in the "What to do about it" section starting on slide number 139. (Don't worry about the number of slides. They are all images with a few phrases in them.)

The slide with the arrows pointing at the moon is number 164 and says "If they're all sighting off the same moon, over time they'll tend to naturally converge". 

I've used versions of this #BirthtoWork graphic since the 1990s to provide a vision that many could share, guiding their own efforts to help kids in high poverty areas move from birth-to-work.

You'll see many examples of this in articles I've posted on this blog since I started it in 2005. Before then you could see examples in printed newsletters that I distributed from 1993 to 2003.

Since the mid 1990s I've used the two graphics below to show that people from every industry, civic and education group need to adopt this birth-to-work commitment, helping more people get involved every day and every year.  View this PDF presentation to learn more about this idea.

We need many leaders pointing at the same long-term goal. 

The problem is. I'm just a whisper in this wilderness. Too few know I even exist. That's why the next graphic is so important. 

Many leaders need to be sharing this birth-to-work vision every day, in order to build and sustain public will, and a flow of talent, ideas and dollars that fuel the efforts of the "boots on the ground", the people working directly with kids.

Anyone can put themselves in the middle, drawing people they know to information they can use, and places where help is needed every day. Maps are essential tools in this strategy since they can point to every place where help is needed, and every organization in each zip code needing constant support to become great at what they do to help kids.

Are you taking this role?  Do you know of any elected official, business leader or celebrity who uses maps and graphics in weekly blog articles that describe the goal and encourage people to get involved?  

I don't, and that's part of the headwind that's keeping us from doing more to help kids or solve any of the other complex problems we're facing.

Note: this thinking applies to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Climate Crisis, public health issues and many others. 

Predicted skills shortage by 2030

If you've read many of my blog articles you've seen this graphic, or a version of it.  It shows a goal of helping kids born or living in poverty areas move through school and into adult lives, with skills and networks that enable them to have meaningful, decent-paying jobs, that enable them to raise their own kids free from the grip of poverty.

In this article I want to focus on skills. And habits.

Below is a Tweet that I commented on this week.  I was listening to Patrick T. Harker of The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, on a  @washingtonpost live event. He was talking about an impending skills shortage in workforce.  

Earlier that day I had received an email from Dr. Ed Gordon, of Imperial Corp. Consulting, with his latest White Paper, talking about the expected skills shortage. So I shared Ed's article in the Tweet, I hope readers will be interested enough to take a look at the video and Ed's White Paper.

Listening to Patrick T. Harker of Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, on @washingtonpost live. He's talking about skills shortage in workforce.

Useful reading on this can be found at https://t.co/GfPFF0aRGC #skills_shortage pic.twitter.com/pRnOIO9Jw0

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) May 21, 2021

Disclosure: I've known Ed since the early 2000s. For a few years he served on the Advisory Council of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. So he's been writing about this for more than 20 years.  

10-2021 update. Here's a YouTube presentation of Ed Gordon introducing his Job Shock book. 

So, what does it take to help kids develop skills and learning habits that would enable them to succeed in school (and meet business needs for skilled workers)?   What motivates some kids to develop learning habits, while others seem indifferent?  Educators have been struggling with this for decades.

Which comes first? Habits. Or skills?  

Earlier this week my #clmooc network of educators shared a TED talk delivered by Laura Ritchie with an invitation to view her presentation and comment on it, using Vialogues.   Laura's message of skill development was one of self-agency, "Yes, I can." was the message.

As I watched her TED talk, I thought back to the Illinois Wesleyan Commencement address which I watched on May 2.  Geisha Williams, the first Latina CEO of a Fortune 200 was the speaker and her message was "Why not Me?"  

I posted this Tweet with links to both.

As I listened to @laura_ritchie say "Yes, I can." I thought of a speech I heard a few weeks ago from Geisha Williams, the first Latina CEO of a Fortune 200 company. You can listen to her talk about the role of a mentor motivating her to ask "Why not me?". https://t.co/ljBEDcncQA pic.twitter.com/XVRzOf6XGO

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) May 20, 2021

This is the challenge.  All kids need to have the "Yes, I can" and "Why not me?" internal engines driving their learning.  In the tutor/mentor programs  I led from 1975-2011, the goal was to stimulate this thinking through the volunteer tutors and mentors we matched with kids and through the activities the program offered.  At best, this was "hit and miss" with no "silver bullet" success that reached every participant.

I created this concept map several years ago to visualize the many different systemic barriers that kids in poverty have to overcome as they move through school and into adult lives.  Volunteers and organized non-school programs are one resource that can help kids and families overcome these challenges, and my mission for the past 28 years has been to try to help such programs grow in more places.

However, the need to instill the "Yes, I can" and "Why not me?" spark in every child, reaches beyond poverty.   Instilling in kids the habits, motivations, of learning is the challenge. Some kids seem to have this naturally, or it has been modeled for them by parents, siblings, neighborhoods, since birth.  

What can we learn from others?  The web library I've been building since the early 1990s is an attempt to aggregate information that anyone can use to try to understand the challenges facing youth, parents and educators and to learn how some people are addressing those challenges.  If an idea is working in one place, why not borrow it and apply it to many places?

This concept map shows the four main sections of my library. Click on small boxes  under each node to dig deeper. 

I've been trying to make it easier for people to navigate my library for more than 20 years.  I wrote this article last November, talking about learning libraries.  I included the World Economic Forum (WEF) library as an example of what's possible. Below is a section that focuses on "Education and Skills".

When we created the first Tutor/Mentor Connection website in the late 1990s we  used the hub/spoke design on the home page to help people navigate to different sections of the library.  In the year's since I've seen other websites with this design feature, but have never been able to build that into my own library.

Thus, I keep pointing to what others are doing, and the information they host.  These are just a few of the many, many libraries of information available to help people find better ways to help children become life-long learners, constantly supported by the "Yes, I can" and "Why not me?" internal motivations.

Finding time to dig into this information, make sense of it, then apply it in one or many places is a huge challenge.  The graphic below shows a strategy I've recommended for many years.

The information available to everyone is represented by the circle at the right side of the graphic. Below the big circle are smaller circles, representing places where small groups of people can discuss the information in the library.  To the left of the big circle are two graphics, representing what each person can do to encourage others to look at the information and join the discussion.

If you share this article in your social media you're taking the "YOU" role.  If you start a discussion of this article in your faith group, workplace, fraternity, and/or family network, you're taking a deeper role.

If you discover other resources, such as more useful platforms/libraries, and you share them with me so I can add them to the Tutor/Mentor library, you're taking an even greater role.

If you do these steps regularly, perhaps we can get closer to answers that are used in thousands of places.  That's the goal.

I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIN. I look forward to connecting with you.  

11-20-2021 update - The Infrastructure bill passed in 2021 does not include funds for training to produce workers to fill all the jobs created by the bill. Read commentary by JFF CEO @MariaKFlynn 

7-28-2022 update - not everyone thinks the problem is a skills shortage. Read this article by Harold Jarche