Jun 19 2009
I blog, you blog, WE BLOG… and learn in the process
I got my kid blogging!!!! Yes, I decided that he should experience the blogging world. Now why would any mother encourage this? Here’s a little background so you understand. My son is turning 17 this summer and has been a “gamer” for the past… oh maybe 10 years. He of course turned it into an obsession less than 5 years ago. This year he got his first computer and I still had the issue that computers are tools not gaming devices. During the year he used it for his homework but during summer, playing from sun up ‘till sun down if I’m not looking, is not an option. So besides a long “to do” list, he got assigned a blog.
You might still be wondering, what good it will do a 17 year-old to blog? He is still sitting at the computer, isn’t he? Well, let me explain our reasoning. We believe that there is something to be learned from everything we do. He plays his games with passion and knows about the gaming world quite a bit. But he is learning nothing useful really. So we agreed that in exchange for a written account of his experience, he could play without being bothered.
What will he LEARN by blogging? For one, to use the technology, my kid knows about blogs and web pages and searching, but he is merely a user. If I had to learn what a widget is, and how to place it in my blog, then I think that he should too; even more than I do. This is his world I’m dabbling in. No use waiting for him to test-drive it when it truly matters. Technology is evolving by the minute; either he gets on board the train now or he will forever be chasing it trying to catch up (or it will take him double the effort, as it has me).
Reason number two: learning to extract information from the many millions of bogus texts and facts out there. This is a harmless and much more interesting way of doing it. Investigate about what you like and know something about already.
Number three: learn to express himself and to communicate; though I have to say that kids today have their own language. Example, “OK so im a lvl 52 feral druid but my PvP SUCKS!!!” if you got this, you are a true gamer. This is part of his text in the blog. There are of course lots of youtube links and much more incomprehensible lingo but time will deal with that, eventually we all settle for a more conventional way of writing (or I certainly hope so, or I’ll be doomed to learn that as well).
Another point, the fact that he is expressing publically will help him understand that if he is good at something he can help and teach others, and if there are others who are better or know more than him, there is always something new to learn.
Though at school he faces failure and competiveness every way possible; games are his hobby and he takes the lessons easier and more to heart. The competiveness becomes acceptable and even encouraged between them and failing might only be a temporary status. Whereas in school, failing is translated into a grade and competiveness translate into judgment and evaluation of your intelligence.
An finally, there is another point for me to have encouraged blogging, I benefit from it as well. We already share Facebook but I don’t really comment about what he writes. He generally directs his replies at his friends and I believe that having your mother write in your wall might discourage them. Now with the blog, I can learn more about his world and have leverage to ask, blogs are public right? So, I gave myself another means to share in his world.
So in conclusion, for me this is a win-win situation. I’ll let you know how his blog is doing and if I ever learn his lingo I might let you know if it’s worth reading by those of us that are not gamers. But I do wish him luck and hope that my experiment work out as I planned it… learning, learning, and learning that’s the name of the game.
2 Responses to “I blog, you blog, WE BLOG… and learn in the process”
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nice article
WOW! I just find this amazing! I have went through pretty much exactly the same things with my boyfriend! We have known each other for the past 8 years since I was a freshman in High School. He always has an obsession with computers, as well as for gaming online. However, in the last year the addiction to it all seemed to get so bad that I just could not understand and was tired of it! I convinced him to go back to college for computers and programing. Thank goodness he did agree that was the best thing for his future, but he wanted to continue to play the games which were taking up hours a day while working full time! I too suggested that he blog about what happens in his game, his experiences, how he programs and builds new parts of the game.
I do not understand the game obsession, but I will admit that it has taught him some very useful information about computers. He knows how to program add on’s and other things for the game. As well as it helped him to help me build my own ecommerce website. He even learned how to build his own website for all of his friends that he plays the game with, and make a forum for them to use. He may have learned many things while playing over the years, but I felt it was more an obsession to play then using it to learn anything the last year.
He has since quit playing because he realized that it really did take a lot away from his school time, and was a large distraction. However, to keep him a bit statisfied with quitting he has started his own blog about the game and how to helps others with the game and getting into the programming side of the game instead of the addiction side. Let’s face it no matter how boring those games may seem they are in demand and if you know how to program anything to do with that game then you will have the ability to make quite a large future for yourself. The programming that he is going to school for is not video game programming, but once you know how to program anything on a computer you can pretty easily work into figuring out anything else.