EnvironMentors Community USERS’ GUIDE FOR MENTORS
1. What is the EnvironMentors Community? The Community (http://environmentors.net) is a place where you can: SUPPORT CONNECT
and communicate with your student
with your chapter and see what events are coming up
SHARE
your expertise with students from around the country
2. Getting Started See the Users’ Guide for Students for info about creating your profile (and helping your student set up their profile). A few Mentor-‐specific things: • Issues: Please select an issue (or issues) related to your work or subjects you are studying – this is how students will be able to find mentors with areas of expertise that might be useful to their projects (and we hope mentors will be able to answer questions to students from around the country – you guys are a great resource for the students). • Who Are You: Select whichever category fits you best (it should start with Mentor…). • My Student: Please select your student from the list (they will need to have already created a profile) and make sure that your student chooses you from the My Mentor list after you have created your profile – this links your profiles together. 3. How to Support Your Student See the Users’ Guide for Students for more info about the types of content you can post on the site (messages, photos, videos, etc). Here are some ideas about how you can support your student: Page 1
Status: On your profile page add a status update about how excited you are to be involved in EnvironMentors and working with your student. Message: Go to your student’s profile page to add a comment and send your student a message – even just to say hi. This will automatically subscribe you to receive updates from their page and is a good way to test and make sure they are getting email notifications (or text messages is they have set that up). Student Project: Help your student get their project page set up and be sure that they post updates whenever there is new info to share. And then be sure to add a comment to the project page congratulating them for their success. Photo/Video: You can help document your student’s research, or even just capture some photos of the two of you (or your entire chapter) hanging out – posting some photos or videos is a great way to get your student interested in returning to the site and it also shares a little more about your personalities with the larger community (we want students to use the site to express themselves – not just to do stuff that feels like homework – and begin to develop relationships with other students around the country. 4. Questions/Support Again, check out the Users’ Guide for Students first if you have questions about setting up and configuring your account (or helping your student with their account) and then get in touch with your chapter coordinator if you have any questions. If you are still stuck, send an email to Jessica Soule at jsoule@ncseonline.org (DC office) or Bill Finnegan at bill@tamarackmedia.com (web master). Also, let us know how we can make this site even better for you and your student!
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