Mentoring Lily: Day 3

I was not able to meet with Lily yesterday because she had to take the day off from work. I called her yesterday evening to remind her to bring her laptop so we can finish working on her Montessori language cards.

This time we decided to meet after work at the local library. We had our laptops and I told her I would watch as she demonstrated what I taught her so far. I was pleasantly surprised to know that she had already gone and made language cards herself at home. I even jokingly said that she didn't need to be mentored in using Microsoft Word. Since she basically learned quickly how to format her cards, I asked her if she needed mentoring in anything else. She told me that she wanted to create an "online journal" and I said, "Oh, so you want to write a blog?" Then she says, "Blob? I didn't say anything about a blob?!" I've never laughed so hard in my life! "No, I said Blog!" and emphasized the g. Then she said, "Is that what it's called?" I said yes. So I directed her to the Blogger.com website and I walked her through opening an account. Once she named her blog, I showed her how to create a post and how to edit her posts as well as publish them.

Once we were through she thanked me and decided to post her first blog. Overall, I think this experience showed me (in my case) that it's easy to work with adults who have some exposure to technology. If I mentored someone who otherwise had "no clue", I suppose it would be harder. Now the final thing is to ask Lily to create an attestation for me on how I did as her mentor!

Mentoring Lily: Day 2

Today was my second mentoring day. We met at the break room with our laptops and I showed Lily how to format the words she typed. Basically, we are creating Montessori language cards so I walked her through the process of choosing clip art and formatting them to the size she wants. I was particularly happy with our session today because instead of a session where I just "show" her what she needed to do and do everything myself with her watching, she actually told me to "walk" her through it so that she won't forget how to do it in case she wants to try at home.

I scheduled another mentoring session tomorrow on what she needs to do to add text or symbols to her language cards. So until then...

Mentoring Lily: Day 1

Today was the first day I mentored my colleague, Lily on how to use Microsoft Word to develop Language lessons in Montessori. She and I brought our laptops to work and decided to devote 30 minutes of our lunch break to this mentoring program. I'm glad we were finally able to do this. Last week I asked her what kind of operating program she used. She didn't understand at first and said, "Huh?" so I explained to her that since I use a MacBook, I use an Apple OS called Leopard and I assumed she understood when I told her I have a MacBook because she said she has an HP laptop so I explained to her that she has the OS that most people use and that's Windows.

Since I found out this vital information, I decided to borrow my sister's laptop which is a Dell and uses the same OS so that we both won't get lost when I'm trying to show her where to go and what to do. Anyway, we sat side by side and had our laptops open. Then I asked her to open Microsoft Word on her laptop. Needless to say, she found it and opened it. Then she proceeded to tell me how confusing it was for her to use the new Word 2007 version. She said she didn't know how to find her saved documents and print them so I proceeded to show her the different buttons on Software and briefly explained each function. I tried to make it as simple as possible for her. After going through the basics of explaining each function of the different drop-down menus of Word I noticed our time was up and so I told her that we would continue tomorrow since we only had 30 more minutes of our 1 hour break to eat. She seemed eager and said she looked forward to our meeting again tomorrow.

Overall, I'd say our first mentor meeting was a success!