Technology and eLearning - SVHATS 2.0

We started the new school year at Cabrini Connections this week, with orientations sessions for students and volunteers.

One of our goals is to teach students, volunteers, staff and leaders to use advancing networking, learning and collaboration tools in their daily interactions. The result of this is that students and volunteers will build learning habits that help them succeed in school, and compete more effectively for 21st century jobs.

One of our strategies is to use an on-line documentation system, (Student-Volunteer History and Tracking System) to document actions and encourage communications between students, volunteers and staff. While we created this system in 2003 and have been encouraging use since then, some of the communications features have never been working as well as we'd like because we have not had the manpower to upgrade the system.

This fall our eLearning and Technology Coordinator, Vjeko Hlede, has rebuilt SVHATS2.0 on a Moodle Platform. While this is for the Cabrini Connections community, I encourage other leaders of tutoring/mentoring programs in Chicago and beyond to review the system introduction.

SVHATS is just one way we support our students and volunteers and learn from their actions. Blogs written by staff and volunteers is another. These focus on different parts of what we do, and offer different perspectives than if there were just one instructor giving information to everyone.

Furthermore, Cabrini Connections is just one of hundreds of volunteer based tutoring and/or mentoring programs we support through our Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy. We maintain a database of hundreds of programs and an email list of more than 4,000 people. Each month we send information to everyone on the list that points to research on tutoring/mentoring, ideas being generated by different programs, and blogs and forums where people can connect and share ideas. Our aim is that other people help spread this information via their own technology. Here's an example.

Part of this points to the Student and Volunteer pages on the Cabrini Connections web site, and our Weekly News. We use this information to support our own students and volunteers. However, we believe that anyone in the world could operate their own program, and coach their own students and volunteers, using the information we provide each week to our own group. If you visit the Tutor/Mentor Institute, you'll find pdf essays that share our vision of a comprehensive, volunteer-based tutor/mentor program where the long term goal is that kids who start with us in elementary school our middle school, are still connected to the program, some of the volunteers, and each other, as they are looking for job interviews as a young adult.

Research shows that the community where you grow up has the greatest influence of your economic success in life. A tutor/mentor program like Cabrini Connections in a high poverty neighborhood changes the mix of adults and experiences that influence and support a youth's aspirations, and opportunities. Thus, if organizations in different parts of Chicago, or in different cities, want to create programs like Cabrini Connections, they can borrow liberally from the material on our web sites to design such programs, and to support their weekly efforts.

As you take that role, link to our sites and you'll provide a wider range of knowledge to your students, volunteers, staff and supporters. Participate in the conferences and forums we host, and we can share ideas and learn from you on a more consistent basis.

This is what Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 are all about and if we can teach our teens to use these concepts, we can give them tools they can use throughout their lives.

Using Technology to Support Youth as Leaders

Many people talk about youth as leaders, but in my own personal experience, leaders are people who have a passion for something, and who invite others to help them solve that problem.

My passion is helping tutor/mentor programs like Cabrini Connections grow in high poverty neighborhoods. Within each of these programs my passion is to inspire the youth, volunteers, staff and donors to constnatly learn from the work of others that they meet via the Internet, to innovate on a daily basis better ways to help our teens stay in school, stay safe during non school hours, and build an adult network that will help them move into jobs and careers as they go their their mid-twenties.

One way I do this is to share ideas that I find via my networking on the Internet.

Here's a link to a youth program in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, in which youth are becoming environmental advocates, and are learning to use web technologies to organize and communicate their messages.

What are the causes our youth might become passionate about?

How about the envirionment? How about the health issues of wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan? How about the social injustices and inequalities of poverty?

How do we lead our teens into this type of involvement? We recruit volunteers who have a passion for these issues themselves, and who will form learning circles at Cabrini Connections, or who will use the tech club, art club, video or writing clubs, as opportunities to teach the communications tools kids need, while providing content ideas through study of social issues.

Are you the type of volunteer who would like to help organize these types of learning circles? If yes, contact us at 312-492-9614 or info1@cabriniconnections.net

Year End Dinner Celebrates Community of Youth and Adults at Cabrini Connections

On June 12th Cabrini Connections celebrated the 2007-08 school year with a dinner and awards ceremony. We recognized the work of 75-80 teens and nearly 100 volunteers who met weekly for one-on-one tutoring/mentoring and/or group learning. Four of our students were high school graduates. Most will be in 8th through 12th grade next year and will continue to need our help, and support from our donors.

When we say "tutor/mentor" most people might think of an image of a youth and volunteer sitting together. How many think of a diagram like the one posted here.



If our aim is to help our 7th graders be starting jobs and careers by age 25, what are the actions that need to happen each week and every year? What are the roles of kids, volunteers, parents, donors and others who need to be involved?

The goal of our elearning strategy is to create an on-line community which includes all of our stakeholders, who each spend time thinking about this goal, and their role in helping us achieve it, and then share what they know with others, via on-line collaboration communities. We've created a technology wiki for people to participate in this process. If you'd like to add your talent to help with planning, marketing, or to be a project manager in one of our technology activities, please introduce yourself.

We've also created a library of ideas and technology tools that our kids and volunteers can learn from. As more and more people visit these sites we hope they will gather in forums like Classroom2.0 to share and learn with others from around the world who are using technology for learning.