E-Community Activity: Guidelines for Protégés

Subject: Guidelines for protégés

Here are a few guidelines to follow as you participate in our online mentoring community.

• Log on to your email account [or into the electronic forum] at least once each week, and read and respond to messages.
• Regularly communicate with mentors and other participants.
• Notify me of any changes to your email address or other personal information.
• Keep paragraphs in your messages short, and separate paragraphs with blank spaces.
• Avoid covering several topics in one message. It's better to send several messages so that recipients can respond to each topic separately.
• Use mixed upper and lower case letters, and capitalize letters in a word for emphasis. Using all capital letters is like SHOUTING.
• It's friendly to begin a message with the name of the person to whom you are corresponding and to end the message with your name.
• Do not use words others might find offensive. Avoid personal attacks. Don't engage in name-calling.
• Do not participate in conversations that would be unacceptable to your parents and/or program staff.
• Do not engage in conversations that you are not comfortable with. Immediately report offensive or troubling messages that you receive to me and a parent or guardian.
• Remember that electronic correspondence is easy for recipients to forward to others and, therefore, is not appropriate for very personal messages. Email is more like a postcard than a sealed letter.
• Spell check and carefully review a message BEFORE you send it.

[name of e-mentoring administrator]