Remote Mentors

[Ninja_Bait]

694 has some alums and old mentors who still offer advice via our email group. They're great for general advice or extra brainstorming power. I think what you're suggesting is a pretty good idea, and should help set your team up nicely. However, you should still have on-site mentors with enough experience to act without your shadow mentors.

[DonRotolo]

Email is great but not real-time. If your remote mentors are available during build time, have them join in virtually using video conferencing via computer. Skype comes to mind, but there are many solutions that are free. You need a web cam at least on the shop end, so they can see what's happening, but these can be had very inexpensively.

[Nomadic Mentor]

If you want to do something a little more elaborate and allow for some movement you can do a tele-presence robot. It's a great summer project and if you have a spare net book its fairly easy to implement.

[rsisk]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Email is great but not real-time. If your remote mentors are available during build time, have them join in virtually using video conferencing via computer. Skype comes to mind, but there are many solutions that are free. You need a web cam at least on the shop end, so they can see what's happening, but these can be had very inexpensively.

Teamviewer is a great, free remote software tool. Especially useful for remote programming mentoring and some troubleshooting

http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx