by Julie Dodd
JEA Mentoring Committee co-chair
We hope you’ll be online Monday (March 26) evening to be part of the CoverItLive conversation about the JEA Mentoring Program. Our time is 7 to 8 p.m. (CDT).
Linda Barrington, Judy Robinson and I will be the producers for the online (typed) conversation.
The image at the top of this post is a screen capture from a previous CoverItLive session on Journalism and the Common Core. When you log on for the mentoring CoverItLive, your screen will look similar.
The big box on the left is where you’ll see the running conversation. You also can see the timing of the comments.
The area on right of this image shows a list of the upcoming events (JEA Mentoring Committee) and lists the completed events. During a live CoverItLive, that section on the right has a box where you can type your comments.
Each submitted comment goes to the producers, who must approve the comment before it’s posted to the conversation. In some cases, a comment might be held if it would fit in better during a later segment of the event.
To get ready for the one-hour conversation, Linda and I had to decide how to divide up the time. We’ve divided our conversation into four segments — explanation of the program, what’s involved in getting a mentor or becoming a mentor, the program’s successes, and questions about mentoring or other topics of interest.
Because the conversation is based on typed comments, we’ve typed some of our comments in advance so that we can copy and paste our comments into the discussion to help move the conversation along. We’ll also be typing comments as others who are participating ask questions or share comments.
CoverItLive also provides the option of having polls. You’ll see a sample of a poll in the image. We’ll release polls during the event and participants can respond. That will help us find out more about who is participating.
You will log on to the event by going to jea.coverpage.coveritlive.com at the time of the event (Monday, 7 to 8 p.m. CDT). You can join or leave the event at any time during the hour. You can watch the conversation, or you can join in. You’ll see from the sample from the conversation (above) that most comments are relatively short — perhaps two to four sentences.
I’ve participated in one CoverItLive event. The comments can move pretty quickly, and the topics can shift as fast as people can type. I enjoyed seeing what people had to say and also seeing how CoverItLives works.
We’ve asked members of the JEA Mentoring Committee, our mentors and their mentees to join us to share their experiences. Hope you’ll be able to join us.