Blogging to Read
When my sister was young she participated in a Writing to Read program at Julia Green. If I remember correctly she was very fortunate that one of her classmate’s father was able to volunteer a large amount of time to work with the students on the Writing to Read program in the school’s computer lab. My sister grew up one of the best and most prolific readers I have ever met. Now she is about to graduate from Law School. I would like for my kids to have the same opportunity (well, maybe not the lawyer part 
).
The world has changed a lot singe the 1980′s. We have computers in our homes for one thing, but over the past few years computers have gotten much more social. This poses new challenges for parents. I want my kids to learn how to be good at interacting socially via computers, but I also want them to be safe.
I have been toying with the idea of combining these two sets of goals into a homemade “Blogging to Read” program. Hopefully this week I will be setting up my 6 year old with his very own wordpress install. It will be a password protected blog so that I can limit access to what he writes, but I do want to let family and friends in. My hope is that people he knows will comment on what he writes, which I think will be a big incentive for him to keep writing.
An added bonus may be that I get a new opportunity to learn about life from the perspective of a 6 year old.
My girlfriend, RUABelle taught that program at Julia Green for several years. Now she’s a kindergarten teacher there. Keep me posted on how this works out. Maybe she can continue your pilot program.
Check out http://www.pnn.com. They are a blogging platform and they have worked with schools to bring blogging into the classroom. Writers include a man traveling to antartica, Eleanor Roosevelt’s niece, etc. A little more PC for kiddos.
This is the coolest idea, Jack. I would love to read it. Writing to Read really was an influential program for me, but this is so much more relevant to Z’s generation.