After spending the past week creating content, Little Miss Techie is proud to finally unveil her new blog, Balsamic Camel! Balsamic Camel is her little place on the internet where she shares the things she loves like her dog, champions the causes she’s passionate about (raising money for cystic fibrosis), provides advice about things like the best places to shop for Rainbow Loom supplies, and links up the videos that she’s done for me. And how did the site get its name? She shares the meaning behind Balsamic Camel in her About section.
After watching me blog for almost her whole life, I’m not surprised that my mini-me has started her own site but what I am surprised by is how much knowledge about the online world she’s absorbed from listening to me talk about the blogging world. She began her blog sitting in on the WordPress workshop at Digital Family Summit where staff were on hand to help guide her through basics but as her site started to take shape, she chose to wait and not reveal it to the world despite her excitement.
Between wanting to write some more content before sharing her site, noticing that her real name appeared in the byline and wanting to change it “so people won’t know my real name,” choosing to moderate comments after discussing what that meant, also being very deliberate in her choice in template (“something not too busy”), and asking me about how I got drop down menus on my site, her choices and the things we discussed last week as she was getting started show me that the little girl that inspired me to share our family technology challenges has grown up.
Kids can learn so many things from blogging but what I’m discovering as the newest digital content creator in our family sits down to write, that the conversations that we’re having teach me something new about my daughter each and every day.
Here are just a few of the things that I love about my daughter’s new blogging adventure. I love that….
- She already loves to write and her blog is a little place on the internet where she can be published.
- I’ve inspired her to blog and friends like Elena Sonnino have inspired her to use her voice for social good and spread the word about what she’s doing through her blog even she only has just a few readers for now.
- We have brainstorming sessions about her content (as in she thinks of an idea and runs it by me first!) and then asks me to check her posts before she hits publish.
- Blogging serves as another avenue to talk about being online as she grows older and we talk about smartphones and social media. She’s working to find a balance between blogging and being a fourth grader, homework, after school activities, and the many other things that she does as a kid.
- The days where she doesn’t get on the computer at all and she spends time outside playing with her brother or crafting. Because isn’t that what a kid should be doing?
So as a shameless plug from a proud mom, please visit Balsamic Camel. Feel free to follow her blog via email and leave comments. Just be gentle and know that she’s entrusted me to moderate her comments first!
