Have you actually considered how a blog can help your children? Most adults spend at least a few minutes each week surfing around on the internet. You might be looking at blogs, checking out the news or other similar features. Have you considered how to turn this experience that you have into a learning tool for your children?
You can actually use the idea of blogging to teach your children several useful skills.
1. Never hand out extremely personal information. This cannot be stressed enough no matter what, parents are continuously shocked to learn what children are sharing. A parent monitored blog makes a great place to start really learning this lesson.
2. Share personal opinions. Most children have something that they are extremely passionate about. Allowing your child to blog gives them a chance to share their passion with the world.
3. Practice proper grammar, spelling and vocabulary skills. Of course writing a report, essay or worksheet would probably be the same exact effect but blogging can be a lot of fun. Plus, since the world can see what your child is writing, they are more likely to put some extra effort into it.
4. Learn proper usage of a blog, including many of the useful features of the different software programs. Laugh all you want, but many children have turned the internet into their own personal ATM machine. By allowing your child the time to learn proper skills online they can easily develop their own business. Knowing these skills well ahead of the children that are coming out of public skills can make them a valuable asset for companies. How many businesses have you seen with official blogs lately?
5. You can help instill a sense of responsibility. Since blogs succeed by having regular content this gives something that your child is responsible for keeping updated continuously. Rather than having a single assignment that once completed is done, a blog gives you a great reoccuring assignment.
Surely you too can come up with some great ways to integrate blogging into your own situation. What do you think would be additional great usages of blogs?
Tags: technology, web resources