Share the Love. Change the World. Make it Better for All.

This graphic was created by two interns from South Korea during a a seven week internship in 2012.  I wrote about it and included a link to the animation in this article.

I was prompted to write today's article because Sunday will be Valentine's Day.  This article from the DePaul University Center for Writing-Based Learning includes it's own message of Love heading into this weekend.  Another article, by Simon Ensor, a professor in France, communicates the same idea and points to ideas I've been sharing at the Tutor/Mentor Blog.

Here's another graphic, also created by the 2012 intern team. Song Me Lee wrote this article, to show how the graphic was created, and to show what she'd been learning during her internship.  I encourage you to look at all of the messages posted by Song Me during her internship.  

On this page of the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site I post a list of interns from 2006 till 2014, with links to articles they wrote to introduce themselves at the start of their internship, and then links to final reflection articles.  Some provide more information than others, but all show an intent that the intern learn new ideas and new skills from working on their projects.

As I've interviewed students for these internships I've emphasized that one of my goals is that these students continue to stay connected to the Tutor/Mentor Connection library of ideas and to each other, so that in future years they become a community of people who help each other, and who apply these ideas to making the world a better place.

Forming a College-Based Tutor/Mentor Connection by Daniel F. Bassill

I created this presentation to show a goal of having student-led Tutor/Mentor Connection-type teams growing on high school and college campuses throughout the US and the world.  Anyone who takes a few moments to view my blogs and then shares what I'm writing about, as Simon Ensor has done on his blog, is providing inspiration and motivation for one or many people to take this roll.

I'm still waiting for the first university or high school to adopt this strategy, and for the first corporation or benefactor to endow it with 10 years of funding, but as they say "Rome was not built in a day."   

I created this concept map to illustrate this vision. If you start writing about my ideas and/or creating your own visualizations, share the link in the comment box and I'll add you to this map.

Better yet, create your own map, and add my blog articles to it.  

Through the collective effort of many, we'll gather the bricks needed to build the "Rome" of this vision.

Many Ways for Young People to Tell Stories

For the past 10 years I've hosted interns via the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, based in Chicago. If you browse through the articles on this blog you can see work they have done, and find places where I'm encouraging educators at the K-12 level and in colleges, as well as leaders and volunteers in non-school youth programs, to engage their own students in creating visualizations for the same purpose.

For the past couple of months I've been following a series of cartoon comics, created by Kevin Hodgson, a 6th grade teacher in Western Massachusetts.  Below is one.

Visit this link and see the entire series.  There are so many different ways for young people to communicate ideas. I look forward to connecting with youth and educators who get involved doing this work.

Here's a link to a site Kevin shared earlier this week that students and adults can use to create their own comic strips.