Thoughts on Kaia's Blog and her Daddy's Blog

Kaia is a very young little girl whose daddy helps her blog. She shares lots of thoughts, pictures and experiences. William Chamberlain's class regularly comments on kids blogs. Kaia's father contacted Mr. Chamberlain's class and asked them to send Kaia a voice thread and they did. This was one more way to connect and provide more motivation to little Kaia to post.
As it turns out, Kaia's Dad does a lot to inspire and motivate Kaia to express herself. He is definitely working towards Kaia's literacy. They took cameras outside, Kaia took lots of pictures and created a photo essay about her pictures to put on her blog. Many people have seen her presentation and have commented. ....This can be very motivating for a young child.....
Kaia's Dad is a teacher. He is very interested in technology being used as a tool in education. He stated that Kaia "is still too young to really grasp the connections that she is making, but in a few years these connections and this type of interaction will be ubiquitous in her life. I hope that her teachers are ready to help her continue on this journey."
While technology is a very useful tool, there is definitely another side that teachers must understand. I believe parents are right to have reservations and the following quote from Kaia's Dad's blog that expresses my own views.
"...this experience was also eye opening for me as a parent, because having Kaia exposed like this made me hyper aware of how vulnerable I am making her... I started to think about how much trust we ask that parents put in us as teachers. Kaia’s blog started as a way to share photos with family, it has quickly become a way that we are documenting her life. And now, it is becoming a way that she is connecting with people throughout the world. This is scary. Part of me wants to pull back and keep her our little secret. But if we want our students to feel comfortable and be cautious online, we must be able to do the same with our own children. As teachers and technology evangelist it is easy to ask parents to allow us to expose their children to a variety of experiences online, but as a parent it can all seem so scary. I agree with many people that if we choose to live open lives online, we must trust that the positive experience will outweigh they dangerous ones, but there is nothing like seeing pictures of your daughter on a youtube video created by someone else to spark up the paranoia. Where can this go? Will I always be able to control it? Should I be able to? These are all important questions to ask as we push the boundaries of our lives and our learning online."