Visit this Museum of Intern Artifacts from 2006-2015

I posted an article on the Tutor/Mentor blog today, using the cMap below, which shows some of the work interns did while working with my organization in Chicago from 2005 to 2015.  I hope you'll take a look.

Archive of work done by Interns from 2006-2015

As you wander through this cMap you'll also want to read this article, where you can find an even fuller list of interns and work they have done.

While I describe this as an archive, and a museum, the ideas are as useful today as they were when each project was first created. The ideas apply to any area with high concentrations of poverty.  The process applies to building a better understanding of any complex problem and mobilizing more people to be involved in creating on-going, long-term solutions.

The Power of Small Change

This video was created over the past two weeks by SunjoongYoo, who is a winter 2014 intern of Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in Chicago.



This is one of many visualizations created by interns since 2005. It's also an example of the type of project students from many place could be doing in an on-going effort to create more and better non-school learning, mentoring and job training opportunities for youth living in high poverty neighborhoods.

New Interns - Introductions

Two new students from IIT and Korean Universities started six-week internships with Tutor/Mentor Connection, Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC last week. Below are their introductions:

Kyungryul Kim



ByeongHui Kim



Over the next six weeks Kyngryul and ByeongHui will use their communications talent to showcase the ideas that others in Chicago, Korea and around the world can use to build systems that make mentor-rich tutoring programs available to youth in more high poverty neighborhoods. Visit this group to follow their progress and to join in if you'd like to do similar work.

New Assignment. A Quest!

I've created a variety of PDF essays that are intended to help people learn ways to support the growth of volunteer-based tutoring, mentoring and learning programs in high poverty neighborhoods. While these can be read on line, I've also presented them to students and volunteers. Going through this information using the PDF can be quite boring. So I've been looking for new ways to introduce these concepts. This is an animation I made to introduce this concept. View on YouTube

Here are a couple of other animations introducing students to a web quest.

Making a map, class assignment, animation.

Doing a web quest.

Look at work interns have done in the past to guide people through this information. As new projects are created we will add them to our web sites, and they become tools students can use to bring more people together in their own neighborhoods to do the work of building and sustaining mentor-rich non-school programs. Try it!

Expanding Networks Supporting Inner City Youth

This is a presentation done in May-June 2011 by Interns from Illinois Institute of Technology. It is an example of the type of work youth in high schools and colleges throughout the country could be doing to help solve complex social problems. Social Network Analysis - Mapping growth of a Network Visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection Intern group and add yourself to this project.

Interns Map Growth of Network

During the May-June 2012 internship Mina Song and Chul Wan Park have been doing some very important work for the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.

Chul spent his six weeks learning to use Gephi.com Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools and create a set of maps showing how the network at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com has grown from three people in 2007 when it was created by Daniel F. Bassill, D.H.L., founder of the Tutor/Mentor Connection and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC, until May 31, 2012. The map below is one of many that you can see in Chul's report.

This map shows the 209 people who joined the Ning site by the end of 2009 and shows how some have begun to build networks of "friends". 

While Chul was learning to use Gephi and pulling data from the membership files on the Ning site, Mina Song was reading articles from the various Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC blogs and web sites. She used these to create five new presentations introducing the Tutor/Mentor Connection and describing the four-part problem solving strategy. Then during the past week she created a final project describing the importance of expanding social networks for inner-city kids and demonstrating how the social network analysis maps created by Chul could be used to show the growth of networks to potential donors and partners.

Mina posted links to each of the presentations she did. Click here.

Chul and Mina are college students from Korea who have spent six months studying at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Tutor/Mentor Connection has had a partnership with IIT for several years in which interns join us each winter and spring and work on projects like the ones Mina and Chul have worked on.

Our goal is that students from high schools and colleges all over the world will join in this project. You don't need to be in Chicago to look at the ideas we share and develop your own presentations to show how these ideas might apply in your own community.

What the Social Network Analysis project shows is the power of network-building. If just one person in a community has an idea for solving a problem, that person can share that idea and invite others to join in. If the person is persistent, creative and able to acquire needed technology and financial support, the network of people working to solve that problem should grow.

Using maps and network analysis tools can provide transparency to the process and can be tools for bringing people together who share the same geography and/or are affected by the same problem.

We're really grateful for the work Mina and Chul have done this past six weeks and for the partnership with IIT that has connected us with these talented students.

If you'd like to get involved just join the http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com group or introduce yourself on Twitter or Facebook.

Sense-Making. Role of Interns

This is a project created by Mina Song, IIT intern, to show the knowledge management strategies of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Mina had to read through many pages of information to build her own understanding before she could create this presentation. Mina is part of an internship program sponsored by Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) which has been working with Tutor/Mentor Connection for several years.

This is the second project Mina did, which shows the efforts T/MC makes to increase the number of people who look at the information we collect and share.

If you browse through articles posted on this blog since 2006 you can see the work of many interns and volunteers. This collective effort is intended to increase the number of people who are strategically involved in helping youth in high poverty areas of Chicago and other cities have access to non-school adult support systems that help them move from first grade to a job and adult responsibilities over a 10 to 20 year period of continuous support.

As one volunteer wrote in 2010 in an article titled Thinking like Google, "It occurred to me that this forum is essentially modeled on a similar format as Google's. Tutormentorconnection.ning.com a) looks for information, or content, and people relevant to the cause of tutoring and mentoring; b) organizes, analyzes, and archives that information for future reference; and c) utilizes those references for targeted advertising campaigns, social networking, grant-writing, and the like. Even more to the point, this forum is a way of attempting to grow the idea of tutoring and mentoring to scale, or to a point where it "tips".

The "In-Forming" Process works something like this:

1. Uninformed people interact with information and become informed.

2. Informed people interact with uninformed people, producing more informed people.

3. Informed people interact with each other.

4. To the point where new information is being passed along to all parties involved, starting the process over again."

With the help of students from hundreds of colleges and universities we can dramatically increase the number of people who are becoming informed, and then interacting with others, so they also become informed, and then more strategically involved in helping a city-wide network of youth supports grow and be sustained for many years.

Meet Spring 2012 Interns

On Wednesday, May 16 two new students from Korea, via Illinois Institute of Technology, joined the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC for a six week internship. See introductions of Mina and Chul. Mina posted this introduction in her blog space on the Tutor/Mentor Connection forum and said "I used prezi.com for creating my introduction." She later told me this was her first experience using Prezi.com This illustrates one of the benefits to students who participate in this project. It challenges them to learn new ways to build understanding and share complex ideas. These are skills the students can take with them into the rest of their lives.

Volunteer your talent with Tutor/Mentor Institute

Below is a graphic created last spring by Sam Lee, an intern from IIT working with my organization in Chicago. Work of other interns can be seen in the blog articles on this web site.



Below is the graphic that she used for inspiration. 



Sam broke this into two graphics. The first part is shown above. The second is shown below:

Over the summer the Tutor/Mentor Connection has been separated from the non-profit structure of Cabrini Connections. Dan Bassill, president and founder of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection (see time line) has created the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC as a new structure to continue the work that has been done for the past 18 years.

We hope that interns, volunteers and different organizations will continue to work with us as they did in the past. While we have had one or two interns every few months working with us, we feel that students in high schools and colleges all over the world could be doing what our interns have been doing. Instead of one student creating an interpretation of a single idea there could be dozens of students creating multiple interpretations. The result would be growing understanding and growing involvement.

If you'd like to get involved join the forum at http://tutormentorconnection.ning.com and introduce yourself.

Networking Strategy of Tutor/Mentor Connection

Visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection form and see the work interns and volunteers are doing to help Tutor/Mentor Connection reach more people who might become leaders, volunteers and donors in support of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in many cities. This graphic is a new interpretation of a graphic posted in this blog article.

Spring 2011 Interns add new talent

This graphic was created by Sam Lee, a new intern from IIT working at the Tutor/Mentor Connection this spring. She read this blog article, then created this interpretation.

Interns from many colleges and high schools can be doing similar interpretations. As they post them to their own blogs and the T/MC forum we can draw more attention to the ideas and more support to volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in many cities.

Contact the T/MC if you'd like to be involved.

Leadership Pyramid - IIT Intern Project

Today was the last day of the Jan-Feb 2011 internship of Jongseop Won who came to us via IIT and his university in Korea. Here's the information we provided to guild Jonseop in working on this project.

This flash animation is his interpretation.

As others look at this information we hope they see how important it is to have intermediaries like the Tutor/Mentor Connection collecting information and supporting decisions and actions of volunteers and leaders throughout the Chicago region.

Interns creativity on display

Jongseop Won is one of our winter 2011 interns from Illinois Institute of Technology. This graphic shows how he is creating a new interpretation of the pyramid that the T/MC includes in this "building a network of purpose" essay. Visit this page to follow his progress on this project. Follow the work being done by interns from IIT, Adler School of Professional Psychology, National Louis University and beyond.

The T/MC ideas that are originated as sketches then converted to power point can be interpreted in many ways by students working at high schools and colleges throughout the world. Contact us if you'd like to be involved.

Network Building: Role of Interns and Volunteers

This blog shows how interns from many colleges and universities have been helping Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection communicate its message to people who can respond as volunteers, leaders, technology support, donors, etc., helping our organization, but also helping any other tutor/mentor program in Chicago, or in other cities.

This graphic is one that illustrates this concept, and which may be converted into an animation by a future intern.



One of our recent interns was Jordan Merlo, a student at Loyola University. She just completed a 12-week intern, which was part of a class assignment. She had to write a final paper, which is posted here on her blog.

Our goal is that hundreds, or even thousands, of students in high schools, colleges and universities all over the world are writing blog articles like Jordan's, with the same goal, and the same topic. That will draw the daily attention of millions of potential volunteers and every day, and change the flow of philanthropy from one where non profits are all seeking food (funding) like fish in a bowl, to one where people who can help (volunteers/ donors/ etc.) are searching the Internet using systems like the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator to choose what city, what zip code, then what program, they want to help.

Jordan is just one blogger you'll find on our Ning site. In addition, if you visit the Cabrini Connections blog, you'll find links to blogs written by our own staff and volunteers.

Finally, if you visit the Tutor/Mentor Connection site, you'll find a long list of bloggers that we follow, who write about learning, fund raising, collaboration, and even tutoring and mentoring.