the HYPERtext of teenage techno-savvy baton rouge

i picked up a book about html and css at the ole barnes and noble last year and started futzing around on frontpage and dreamweaver. somehow that qualified me to teach a class to teenagers in web design. every day i worry that when they come into the room it will suddenly be painfully obvious that they know more than i do about the internet. of course, every day they DO come in knowing more than i know. but i'm ok with that. for now i'm cracking open new ground by helping create real community around a bunch of silicon chips and electrodes. every day the web savvy class marches through the door we're thrown into close quarters and have to work quickly and intelligently to master the internet together. there are twelve people in the class, and even when only ten show up like today, and when jade, another mentor, is able to assist knowledgeably, i still feel myself pulled in too many directions. have i planned poorly? probably not poorly, though there's always room for improvement. no, the real issue is that the world wide web is a fast-paced world, a galaxy of information coming and going. and what kind of mentor would i be if didn't try to help young people, to work with teenagers to create better understandings and uses of all this crazy, awesome, big, mysteriousness that we call being ON LINE?

here is a shout out

to every kid
that wanted to master the computer world
to every kid
who ever sent a friend a warm thought through bebo or myspace
to every adult
who ever worried seriously about their own ability to keep up in order to keep everyone else safe
to every teen
in the Teen 360° Summer University 2008 Web Savvy class
to every computer
at the teen center
to every server, every browser, every br/
even for those of us who don't get breaks
to DeAndre, Gift, and Spencer
because i know the url addresses to their blogs
and
to every time we try again, learn something new, and grow

Footnote: #11, #12, & #13 - all blogs started by teens working in the Web Savvy class summer '08. I can't wait to hear more from these ridiculously cool people.