Today Mel Chua told me one of the most interesting techniques I've heard for teaching blogging / contemporary communication to young people.

Here is the issue, I'm a 4th grader, I'm born in a world where I need to know modern communication tools, and I'm trying to learn blogging. Miracles beyond miracles, I've setup Wordpress and I'm realy to write my first post, and I see this:

I'm scared.

Well maybe not, maybe our hypothetical 4th grader acts as I did the first time I saw the linux kernel menuconfig: not building bus support? What a fun experiment!!

Regardless, whether frozen, or intrigued, this is too much for blogging un-initiated 4th grader. I mean, whats a tag? Do I want one? What happens if I don't enter one? And Categories, will I only be able to see my post under certain categories? Am I even allowed to think about posting before I create categories? And for the love of God, what is a trackback?

A teacher Mel worked with (Mel's Aunt?) gives her students a print-out like the following:

Much simpler. Go write you blog-post, kids! When they're done with the post, they get on a computer, go to WordPress, and post for real. Suddenly, the Add Post page isn't so daunting, it looks just like the paper--with some extras.

Cool, eh?