The little bloggers!

Back in February, DD decided that she wanted a blog of her own. It seemed as though it would be a good way to get her to improve her writing, so I set one up for her. She is very enthusiastic about it, though she does not always follow through and write blog posts about all the things she decides are 'bloggable'.

My brother in the UK has set up a blog for my niece too, and it is interesting to see what she blogs about. There are some nice intercultural exchanges going on as we share stories from our lives. We hear from my brother and sister more often now that we have yet another way to communicate.

Last Saturday DS and I saw a bear in the backyard. Later, as we were going somewhere in the car he was still babbling with excitement about the bear. I was only half listening at first, but then suddenly I heard him say, "I'll have to write about the bear on my blog."

"Blog? You don't have a blog!"

"But I need one so I can write about the bear!"

So I set the blog up, and in the first two days he dictated three posts. He had a little difficulty understanding how it worked at first. We posted one story about the bear, and then he wanted to add to it later. I explained we could do that, but seeing as Aunty England had already read his first post, we should probably just write a second one. He wasn't too sure about that. He also didn't understand at first that he could actually write about things other than the bear. Nor did he grasp the concept of the interface being the same for his blog and for mine when creating posts, so he threw a hissy fit when he saw me writing a post for my blog as he thought I was changing his blog.

So both kids now have blogs and we're a four blog household. Their blogs are open by invitation only, but I am still teaching them to be very careful about what they post on them. No real names, and we think carefully about what photos we use.

And to think it wasn't that many years ago that my brother and I could not even send each other email because the systems we were on didn't 'talk' to each other! Now I have a variety of email addresses for different purposes. When I say we're going to call grandma, the kids automatically head for the computer rather than the phone, assuming I mean we're going to use Skype. They want the instant gratification of a reply to an email the same or the next day, not a letter a couple of weeks later. They ask if we can scan their artwork to send it to grandma, and they expect responses to their blog postings within the hour! Although their computer use is limited (no Club Penguin or Webkins) compared to some of their peers who already have unlimited internet access from computers in their bedrooms (disasters waiting to happen), they are still very firmly a part of the digital generation.