Thinking Like Google

[Michael B. Romain]

My experience so far with Dan and T/M C brought me back to a passage of a book I read earlier this year, Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. Friedman wrote:

"The key breakthrough that enabled Google to become first among search engines was its ability to combine its PageRank technology with an analysis of page content, which determines which pages are most relevant to the specific search being conducted. Even though Google entered the market after other major search players, its answers were seen by people as more accurate and relevant to what they were looking for" (155).

It occured to me that this forum is essentially modelled 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.

[Bradley Troast]

Excellent post! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I especially like this last bit about the "in-forming" process.

[Karina Walker]

Michael-

Although I am sure we will meet in person in the coming weeks, I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and welcome you to T/MC. I recently graduated from Northwestern and have a yearlong fellowship at T/MC as Research and Collaboration Coordinator. I started working here in July, and I think what you wrote in this article expresses the mission and work of T/MC in a very concise and insightful manner.

I am so glad that you will be working with T/MC in the coming weeks bringing with you communication skills such as these--I know you will be a tremendous asset here!

I look forward to meeting you!

Best,
Karina

[Daniel Bassill]

You are exactly right. Whereas charities are struggling to find funding in a shrinking economy, we have the potential to constantly expand the number of people involved, and the resources available.

The flash animation presentation at this links demonstrates what you've communicated. You've found a way to use a few paragraphs to say what we're doing, whereas, it takes me thousands of words.