EDC639: A2 – Mentoring Project (Spring 2002)

“In the beginning was the word . . . “

Before video cameras, even before song writing, there was writing. I’d been a doodler from the time I could hold a crayon, but there was just something about putting words to page, the process of telling a story, that held me.

Later I realized that whether one’s medium was music or videography, the skill to “paint a verbal picture,” to tell a story, lay at the center of being successful in all of these mediums.

Some time before the beginning of this term a friend, who is comfortable handling a still/film camera, mentioned that she wished that she could write better. I thought that that would be an interesting challenge, to improve her writing skills and use technology. Well, the technology came into play mostly because she lives 50 miles away. Besides the phone, we’ve used AOL’s Instant Message and email to communicate. But I thought that creating a Web Journal or Log (BLOG) with her would be the most appropriate way, using technology, to work with her.

There were several reasons for using a BLOG instead of chat or email. If the “learning” objective of my mentoring is to improve her writing skills than chat isn’t necessarily the right forum because chat is about short responses and witty comments (hopefully). Improving one’s “fast twitch” capabilities may be a good physical/mental exercise, but not conducive to the task at hand. Email is good for longer, more developed writing, but it starts to get ponderous if one wishes to maintain the element of “dialogue” within the individual emails. So, I elected to let the “learning objective” dictate the technological medium. Hopefully this will work out. JBB

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