This article points out how embracing technology as a parent adds insight into your child’s life, and presents powerful educational opportunities for the child as well as the parent. Technology, MTV and Rockstar Games aren’t ruining kids. It’s lackluster parenting. Pay attention to what your kids are interested in and everyone wins.

From the Christian Science Monitor, by Laura Matthews

A 2002 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project details how the Internet gives kids access to information in ways prior generations couldn’t even have imagined. At the click of a mouse, students can find the most up-to-date research for projects, seamlessly connect with study partners, share sites rich in subject matter, and find online tutors and study groups. The Internet is a virtual reference library, a 24/7 guidance counselor, and the most portable locker, backpack, and notebook imaginable.; My daughter discovered online journals, or “blogs,” when she was 16. After a lot of negotiating, she was allowed to start her blog on www.xanga.com Her “xanga” had to be accessible by me. She couldn’t post her real name, photos of herself, or her location, and I encouraged her to warn her friends not to either. But in keeping an eye on her xanga , I also had access to her friends’ xangas. Surprise – this opened me up to a whole new world of insight into today’s teenager. These kids can write.; To keep a blog going, you have to have the discipline to write daily. This puts today’s young bloggers on the fast track to future Pulitzers. To keep your friends coming back, you have to be interesting, funny, intelligent, relevant. These kids are all that and more. Once I got past the immature spelling and punctuation (along with usual teen slang and vulgarity), I was treated to some of the best poetry I’ve ever read. All of their blogs together are a veritable anthropological study of high school life. One senior I know has, in four years, transformed from what seemed like functional illiteracy – incomplete sentences, poor spelling – into a blossoming philosopher headed for a major university.