I keep a couple of blogs, partly to test different online tools, partly to track different parts of my life.

This blog obviously logs my thoughts about technology, education and the mix of the two. It’s full of words – lots of words. Occasionally, I toss in a picture or two. I try to do more, but I am wired as a wordy person.

I do have a Tumblr blog that I use for photos. I’m trying to teach myself to take more interesting pictures with my phone. Obviously, I don’t post much, and I tend to post mostly garden photos. It’s fun, but it’s mostly an exercise to push myself in a different direction.

My daughter also has a Tumblr blog. It’s quite different from mine. It’s her way of expressing thoughts, ideas, feelings, likes, dislikes, frustrations, passions and more. She’s quite active on the blog – finding visuals that express how she’s feeling, creating some herself, and even her words have a visual feel to them. It’s a completely different experience than looking at my blog of words, yet you can easily get a good sense of who she is as a person.

Yet, she’s trapped in a school system that forces her to read pages and pages of dense text, with hardly a visual present. Her homework: all words. While she is actually developing into quite a good writer, I often wonder what she could do if she were allowed to express her learning and understanding using visuals.

Fortunately, she was able to add an art class to her course load this year. We let her do Physical Education this summer (online) because the class at school was a total waste of her time and bordered on abusive. Art = way better option.