Kids and Technology

Yesterday my son and I were hanging at home basically waiting for a playdate to come through, and he decided that he wanted to make an avatar. He has seen them on yahoo via my daughter's email account, so we sat down and made an email account for him so he could play with the characters.
It also occurred to me that it was a great way for him to communicate with his dad and his grandparents. Sweet...two birds, one stone. So we deliberated over his email addie. His sister's is a cute version of "Rock Star Soccer Girl", so he understood the concept was to describe himself, and using his name was far too boring. His first couple choices were taken and he was starting to get frustrated, when we combined our city, his favorite activity and his age. Bingo. He was very pleased.

I showed him how to add an address to his "contacts". I showed him how to send an email. I showed him the cool backgrounds, and how to change the subject line. Within an hour I was receiving emails, with the subject line "freechat" that simply said, "I love you" in the body. Two hours later I heard him laughing and laughing in the office and shortly thereafter received an email with "monkey talk" in the subject line that had a beautiful sunset in the background, which read "Ooh oh Aahh ah, I am a monkey. Keep it a secret. Sshhh. "
My son has jokes.



Now I'll have to learn how to set the parental controls on my pc. It's only a matter of time :)