Why Blog? What the kids think.

I had an interesting conversation with a couple of Year 7 students today who, when told that part of their lesson today would be to add to their blog commented, "We don't get why we have to blog." They wondered what was the point of blogging. Good question (as usual) and it made me think more about what I was actually asking the students to do.
In the immediacy of the lesson I quickly rethought what I had planned to do and decided that we would brainstorm all the Information and Communication technology that we use. And then I asked the kids to think about the one or two things that they couldn't 'live' without and to blog about that.
Seemed to solve the immediate problem but not the long term one.
Later in the day I caught up with the same kids and we talked a little more about what they might want to learn about.
I told them a little about Web2.0 and it's development on the web. How it's one of the reasons that I want to encourage them to blog. So that they, like so many other people in the world, have an opportunity to express their thoughts. To think about what is important to them.
They seemed more interested, especially when I suggested that they have more of a discussion about what they would like to learn about and that I would be happy to listen to them and see what we could come up with.
So that's where I left it for today but it did make me think and wonder about what I could do to encourage them to realise the power of the web and the way it can make a positive difference in people's lives.