"Bloggers are inspired, for the most part, by things that happen to them, or something they read or observe." - ITEC830: Week 5

Bloggers: Portrait of America's New Storytellers by Amanda Lenhart and Susannah Fox (2006, July 19).

Interesting to read some official statistics of what I already suspected. Although I'm not sure how comfortable I am with falling into the 'older' demographic (anyone above 30 years of age), I find it interesting the difference between how the 'younger' and the 'older' look at and use blogs. Within my group of friends and acquaintances are living examples of the validity of these findings.

For the most part, the under 30 tend to broadcast their life doings, creative endeavors, and social/political thoughts through LiveJournal, MySpace, Flickr, cell phones, email distribution lists, etc. Us 'older' folks tend to stick with the email...it's a bit slower, you know, which is fitting to our pace of life ;) *kinda kidding*. I feel like many of my friends above 30 (myself included) gave up on "keeping up with the joneses" of technology after surviving the soul sucking situation of the .bom. Don't get me wrong, we're still into the gadgets and their ability to help us google maps our way through daily life, but the excitement energy barrier is much higher. We've run like lemmings from one techie thing to the next, caught up in the 'irrational exuberance' and have learned to be patient and let trends shake out before throwing our hearts into them. It's this reason that I think the older crowd is a bit reluctant to hop on the blog bandwagon. We see it's value in the form of LinkedIn (letting us hook up with the right fit company), but it's not as valued as a form of self expression and entertainment.

I wonder what the future that the 'younger' bloggers are shaping will look like? Obviously, the old ways of information distribution and even creation are changing. It is time for a new way of teaching. I know this is nothing new to the education community, but it is something I'm only coming to fully understand as this course continues and I reflect on my beliefs of how education should change based on my own experience as a child. Even the reality that modern children are unique to this era of communication explosion was something I'd not fully realized.

I'm feeling like this old dog is learning some new tricks.