Monday, October 14, 2024

How will you feel on Nov. 6, 2024?

I'm not sure you've noticed, but there's a huge election coming in a few weeks.  I'm hopeful the winner will be Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and scared to death that it won't happen.  Or, that she'll win, but not have a majority in the Senate and the House, meaning gridlock over the next four years.

I already voted. I urge you to make a plan and vote. Don't sit this one out.

But, what comes next?  What issues does a Harris/Walz team need to address.  The photo above is from the official Kamala Harris for President website. Visit this page to look at the issues she is focused on. 

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article with this concept map.

I think many of the topics on my map are issues she plans to address.  I hope someone in her team will take a look and see if they are missing anything.  I feel that without creating maps like this, showing all issues that need to be addressed, and showing places where resources are needed, we end up doing the right thing at the wrong time, or for not long enough, or in too few places.  

That's the reason engineers and construction workers use blueprints. They show ALL of the work that needs to be done, in the sequence it should happen.

Without applying this thinking to solving complex problems, progress is slow, if at all.  

I'm going to try something new with this article.  I've posted some paragraphs from past blog articles that I hope someone from Harris/Walz will take time to read.  These are ideas I've been sharing since the 1990s.  Too few have ever seen them. Too few have adopted them. 

You can click the image to enlarge and read the graphic. Then I hope you'll use the link provided at go to the article. Read it. Think about it. Share it.











I've only highlighted five articles.  I've written more than 1200 since 2005. Many have the same ideas and the same focus.  

In many of my articles I emphasize a use of maps to show where people need help, and to assure an even distribution of resources to EVERY area where help is needed, not just to the most visible or the most well connected.   Here's one example. 




While I've addressed this article to the people who I hope will be our next President and Vice President, these ideas are for leaders in every city and state, both in the private and the public sector.  

Building interconnected web libraries that make "all that is known" available and easier to understand and apply, then an on-going public education campaign that teaches people to visit this information and use it to innovate solutions to complex problems, is a path forward. 

The big challenge is that too few have the resources, or motivation, to build such libraries and keep them updated for 20-30 years like I have.  This is an ideal project for universities to be doing, using a constant flow of student talent to collect and share the resources, then to use them during their alumni years.  

Most universities do some of this work already. But most don't connect to libraries in other places, and other universities, in an interconnected web of knowledge.  That's what I feel should be happening. 

If you know of examples where this is being done, please share the link in the comment section. 

Thanks for reading, and sharing my article.  Please reach out and connect with me on social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon, BlueSky, Instagram, etc.  Find links on this page.

Finally, please consider a contribution to help me continue this work. Visit this page.

Wednesday, October 09, 2024

Dave Winer - a blogger for 30 years!

One thing that constantly humbles me is that no matter how much I put in the Tutor/Mentor library, it is only a small fraction of what is happening in the world.

Here's an example. A couple of days ago I saw a post on Twitter from Harold Jarche, about Dave Winer, who started blogging 30 years ago.


I've followed Harold and other pioneers of Internet networking and learning for many years and include links to his website in my library.  However, I don't recall every seeing a post by Dave Winer.   I started following him, like I do so many others. 

Today I saw this post by Dave, pointing to an article on the Daring Fireball blog (another that I did not know about, which has archives dating back to 2002). 


The article ends with this praise:

"He has such a distinctive writing voice that is impossible to imagine in any medium other than the web. But I think that’s because he helped define what writing not just on the web, but for the web, even meant."

Here's a post on Twitter by Harold Jarche, who has been writing about "Personal Knowledge Mastery" for the 20 years I've followed him.  Many of my own articles about learning parallel some of Harold's ideas.


Since I'm doing shout-outs to some of the pioneers who I've learned from over the past 30 years, Howard Rheingold, should also be recognized.  Here's a post that Howard shared on Mastodon.Cloud, about creating online community nearly 30 years ago. 


He points to this page.


In another post Howard points to an archive of Whole Earth publications (open here) , started in the 1990s. 


If you visit this section of the Tutor/Mentor library you'll find links to blogs written by Harold and Howard, and many others who I've added over the past 20 years.  I added a link to Dave Winer's blog today.  This is one of four sets of blog links in this part of the library.  

That's a lot of information and ideas!

I've used this graphic for many years to illustrate the constant learning required of a volunteer, staff member and/or leader in an organized non-school tutor/mentor program.   These are habits we want to build in the kids we tutor and mentor, and to our own kids!

You can see it in this article titled "Building Personal Learning Habits - Solving Complex Problems".

If you read the article you'll see that it points to the work of Harold Jarche and shows how I've tried to create a learning culture in the tutor/mentor programs I led, starting back in 1973 when I first became a volunteer and started to seek out ideas.  

 I started this blog in 2005, so am a youngster, compared to Dave Winer. I think my writing style is choppy, learned through writing retail advertising for 17 years.  I also could have benefitted from some of the auto correct features now available.  I cringe when looking at some of the typos in past letters and visual essays.  

But, I keep writing because there are still thousands of kids living in areas of persistent poverty in Chicago and other cities, rural areas and reservations around the country.  In each place, if someone is building a library like mine, they create a wealth of information people could use to build and sustain efforts that do more to reach kids and help them through school and into adult lives free of poverty's grip.

I've been digitizing my files and am almost complete. Now I've a lot of organizing to do.  However, unless I find someone(s) to take ownership of my work and use it as a teaching tool, thought starter, and reminder of the persistence that is needed, it will be lost forever in just a few years.

Here's a presentation I was able to create, drawing from my archives. It shows my outreach to universities in Chicago, the US and abroad over the past 30 years.  It includes links to many original documents showing work student interns did to help me build Cabrini Connections, the Tutor/Mentor Connection, and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

It's an example of the type of presentation student researchers could be creating to show others what information is available in my library.

I saw another post by Dave Winer today saying "It’s time for people who make their online home on Twitter to find a new home in the social media world. This place is a haven for fascism. We really don’t belong here anymore."

That's sad, because without Twitter we might never have connected.  I've started accounts on other platforms (see links here) but it took me 15 years to build my small network on Twitter.  I don't have that much time to rebuild on another platform, but I'll try. 

If you value what I'm sharing please consider a contribution to support my work. Visit this page

Thursday, October 03, 2024

Connecting networks. The Tutor/Mentor Conferences 1994-2015

I started connecting with other people beyond Chicago via letters, telephone, and the traditional media during the 1980s and by email and on-line list serves in the 1990s.  The first Tutor/Mentor Connection web site was built for me by the brother of one of my tutoring program volunteers in 1997 and a new version was built by another one of our volunteers in 1998, then rebuilt again in 2006 by a team from IUPUI. That site hosted the Tutor/Mentor library, which I moved to the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC site in 2019.

I began participating in email list discussions around 1995 and have continued for nearly 30 years. Through this I have grown my connections and commitments to on-line learning, network-building, mapping and collaboration, even though many of the people who have the money to fund my work are not yet using the Internet the same way.

I started participating in cMOOCs that connect people and ideas in on-line, open and on-going efforts in the early 2000s.  In 2004 we hosted our first eConference, in partnership with IUPUI.  We repeated these in 2005 and 2006, in the same time frames as we hosted face-to-face conferences in Chicago.  

I joined a "connected learning MOOC" (#clmooc) in 2013 which encourages participants to learn new ideas and share what they are learning on blogs, and different social media platforms.  I've stayed connected to participants from that group since then. A few have become financial supporters of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

In 2016, as a result of participating in this type of learning for several years, I posted a conference history story map on the Tutor/Mentor Exchange site after seeing a similar map done by someone else.

Click here to see my version.

I shared this link with #clmooc friends via Twitter and Terry Elliott, who I've written about before (see story), put my presentation on YouTube and added music to it. You can see it below.



Every time I or someone else posts an article related to the mission of the  Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, my hope is that others will do what Terry did, and what student interns have done often between 2006 and 2015, and create their own versions and interpretations, which they share with their own network.

One group of people who played an important role during the late 2000s, who I've not featured often enough, were the Northwestern University graduates who served one year fellowships with my organization.  

I asked each one to write a blog, chronicling their experiences, starting with day one, and ending with a final reflection.  The first was Nicole White, who joined us in the summer of 2007. After her fellowship year we were able to employ her in 2008 and 2009 as a full-time Tutor/Mentor Connection coordinator, with a grant from the Lawyers Lend-a-Hand Program at the Chicago Bar Foundation.  

Since this article is about the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences, I encourage you to visit Nicole's blog and scroll through the articles she wrote about the five conferences that she was part of.  

You can read the blogs of Nicole and our three other Northwestern University fellows (Chris Warren, Bradley Troast and Karina Walker) on this site, and you can meet other interns from various colleges on that blog, too.

I hope you'll take time to view these.  Making sense of what we're doing, or trying to do, is an on-going challenge. Blogs written by staff, students and volunteers add a deeper perspective to the work we do and hopefully motivate donors to not only support us, but to support other programs, in other places, who are doing similar work, AND, telling their stories via blog articles.

Furthermore, they enable leaders and volunteers from different programs to see our strategies and borrow ideas that they might put into their own programs.  Learning from each other has been the goal of my networking and web library since the 1970s.

I've put together a concept map that aggregates links to blogs of people who have helped amplify and shape the ideas I've been sharing.  I'd like to be adding others. Just send me a link to any stories you create.

While I've not had the funds to host a Tutor/Mentor Conference since 2015, I'm still connecting people and ideas to help youth tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in all high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities.

This photo was taken in 1994 during the second full year of creating the Cabrini Connections program in Chicago.  It shares a vision of adults and kids connecting in on-going programs that I continue to spread through this blog, my website, email newsletter and social media.

I hope you'll connect with me. Share your own stories and links to your blog and visual essays. Visit this page to see where you can find me on social media.

Finally, I hope you'll consider a contribution to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.  Visit this page for information.