TELEMENTORING

Telementoring, however, might be successful in enabling more pedagogical support to be given. Although educational telecomputing has been relatively recent in B.C., pockets of experienced teachers do exist. For example, a consortium of school districts in the central interior of the province has been using a telecommunications network for several years. In addition, there are a number of experienced telecomputing teachers in other districts. The telementoring idea underlying this paper, therefore, is that a cadre of experienced telecomputing teachers would be recruited to provide educational support to novice users who wished to be part of the program. Mentors would be both reactive (replying to queries) as well as proactive (contacting their mentees regularly). The support would be primarily pedagogical in nature, focusing on helping teachers to use telecomputing activities within the curriculum, as opposed to helping them to develop personal technical skills. (Wighton, 1993)