On-Line Mentoring
The ability to mentor students and their families in their home is one of the most important keys to the success of this program. Generally, families are reluctant to allow mentors, school officials, or social workers into their home, and are not willing (or able) to devote the time to get family counseling outside the home. Two general approaches were considered to implement this, Internet conferencing and telephone conferencing.

Internet Conferencing
Using the Internet for conferencing has a mystique which we feel is beneficial to the project. The student is more likely to be familiar with this milieu than the parents, and this should be beneficial to creating a rapport between the mentor/mediator team and the student. One of the goals of the project is to evaluate this approach to home mentoring.

Internet conferencing can be accomplished in several ways, text (chat room, instant messaging), audio, and video. All of these require a connection to the Internet. A cost-effective way to obtain this connection which does not require a computer is webTV. All that is required in the home is telephone service and a television set. The webTV device contains a built-in modem and browser to view web sites. Access to dial-up service is provided by Microsoft for a monthly fee. With this access to the Internet, the family may use the project conferencing system.

The service includes a personal home page and email. Additionally, up to five sub-accounts may be created from the same webTV box. We recognize that access to the Internet has some opportunities for mischief. The webTV access can ameliorate this to some extent. WebTV access allows a customized home page for the student/family which has content filtering for web pages and restricted access to chat and instant messaging. The main account may be password protected so that the sub-accounts can not be modified.

Text conferencing (chat room) lends itself to this project due to its simplicity and low band-width requirements. Utilizing the experience of Resolution Forum, Inc. in on-line mediation, a customized chat room was created which was optimized for simplicity (screen shot). Access to the conference is password protected, and a transcript of the conference is saved by the system for analysis by the project.

Telephone Conferencing
By providing the family with a device (such as the Panasonic KX-TS700 Telephone Conference System*) the family may conference with the mentor/mediator team by sitting around a table and speaking normally. The device has a speaker, so all can hear the other side of the conference. This method has the advantage of using familiar technology, and allows participation without multiple telephone handsets or handing the telephone from party to party.

This verbal interface may have some inherent difficulties. When the relation between parties is strained, they often fall into a pattern of behavior manifested with often repeated destructive verbal exchanges. Knee jerk reactions to comments polarize them, and meaningful communication ceases. The non-verbal (written) exchange inherently does not allow this to happen. Its slower pace and possibilities for reviewing before sending put barriers up for falling into familiar patterns. This notwithstanding, we may evaluate this technology if time permits.

*this is presented as an example of the available hardware, and is not an endorsement for this brand.