Blogging and Teens

Last Saturday, we had 2 hands-on sessions for teens in creating a blog, using blogger.com

Why? Don't they already know all about this?
Well... the teen librarian has a public computer designated for teens right by her desk, and she had noticed the teens trying to set up blogs, but getting frustrated when they didn't understand the options in the setup.
It turned out the same was true in the sessions as well. Questions involved things like 'will the title of my blog display on the page?' 'do I have to put a description?' 'what's "date format" mean?' 'do I want to moderate comments?' Explaining their options and the results of their choice was all they needed to get rolling!

The teens were surprised that we also have blog classes for adults. When I told them senior citizens are the fasting growing group of bloggers, they thought that over for a moment and could see the possibility since the seniors have so many life experiences they could write about.

The moment we're all chuckling about at work... at the beginning, I introduced myself and said that I work with the teen librarian on a lot of projects, but often behind-the-scenes. One girl in the class said, "Oh, so you're like Chloe." [fans of 24 will get this reference]

Instead of a photo of themselves, many of the teens surfed for a pic from the internet to use. We had some time left at the end, and they began to show me some of their favorite sites. After they played the llama song a few times, believe me, it was tempting to play the blogga song, but i didn't. They just LOVE Numa Numa! Want to learn more? There's even a wikipedia entry for this internet phenom!

Being behind the scenes most of the time, and mostly getting senior citizen students, this was a cool opportunity to see some of the sites the teens are visiting.

Want to see a range of what they created?

"Things other than sports I play" by Kat

"On the wild side" by Ellen

"Creaturemaster's Travels" by Tom

"What's on my mind" by Ellen

"Angel's Music/Life Blog" by Angel