An innocent attempt to de-stress my ten year old by allowing her to play 'Farmville' on Facebook, turned out to be my stress. She became addicted to the game. So, I decided to introduce her to blogs and she was quite excited about it. I showed her some of the reading blogs and though she expressed sentiments like, "That sounded good,"she didn't seem to be very interested in the blogs. I then said, "Let me help you create your own blog." From that moment onwards, it was truly amazing to see how much the process of creating a blog appealed to her. I found that she was learning so fast and she totally enjoyed customizing her page. I was impressed when she said, "I want to put a background that tells about what I like." She also asked many questions along the way such as what kinds of things can she write about and she even said that blogs were more interesting than facebook so this made me extremely happy and thankful. She took her time to write, read and edit her first post which was her experience in Niagara Falls . She even put up a picture.
Since then, she has created about four posts and I notice her careful use of certain expressions and grammatical structures. The precision which is displayed in creating the posts will certainly be useful in helping her with essay writing. What makes it fun for her is the artistic part of the activity which is captured in the use of colour and design. So, by introducing my daughter to blogs, not only have I curbed the facebook addiction but, I have also helped in developing her reading and writing skills, hence my reason for calling blogs, "A Blessing in Disguise."
Hi Denise,
ReplyDeleteMy daughter is a facebook fan and Farmville fan too. Unlike you, I have had to curb her interest in facebook moreso than Farmville because she was spending so much time chatting when she came home from school... mind you, most of the time she was chatting with the very same friends that she had just spent the day with in school. She also keeps in contact with our numerous relatives both home and abroad through facebook.
Like you, I tried to interest her in blogging by setting up a blogging account for her with Blogger. She customized it to suit herself and even made a few posts but she was just not interested. I think part of the problem is that she did not have a network of friends like in facebook and although she knows her she has easy access to other bloggers she does not want the hassle of searching. I think the only way she will become interested in blogging is if some of her other friends are doing it too so she has company. I probably have to do more searching to find sites that that have features that would interest her eg. disney movie stars, singers, fashion, cars, recipes ...she loves foodnetwork.
Until then, I have to resign myself to more facebook and msn messenger conversations and paying the cell phone bill for constant texting... ah, the joys of being mother of a teenager.
Hi Denise,
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side, my daughter loves creating ebooks using Powerpoint - adding pictures, graphics, text, audio and experimenting with Powerpoint's design features especially, animation schemes. So I guess, to each his own.
Hi Dayah,
ReplyDeleteI understand what you mean perfectly about the challenge of getting my daughter to blog without having other bloggers to share her experiences. I would not consider her two cousins as the ideal audience.
Like you, I see the need to set up a database where she can blog with her friends. This can be a good stress reliever, a way for them to express their thoughts and a very good practice indeed for all those essays they have to write.
I like the idea of teaching her about the ebooks but I have noticed that she has an interest in photography so apart from giving her some of the useful hints about taking good photos, I can introduce her to digital photostory where she can merge her creative skills. What a fantastic idea!