Hardware, Software, Pixels, Sound. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when marketers from the Pixel Nation tried to take over the Internet.

My daughters love the show, Avatar the Last Air Bender, and are eagerly awaiting the The Legend of Korra. Through the fan site, my eldest and youngest daughters watched the first two episodes. Afterwards, I told Fiona that she needed to work on her pixel bending. Later, I talked more about it, and it occurred to me that following the four elements of Avatar, there were four elements of the internet and video games.

Hardware, Software, Pixels, Sound. A good internet experience, or video game experience, is likely to be based on most, if not all of these elements. As I thought more about it, it seemed that each of these have long histories.

The Hardware Benders, are the craftsmen and artisans of ages ago. They were the blacksmiths, shoeing horses, later, creating sculptures, moved over to gear heads, ham radio operators, and folks building computers in their garages.

Then, there are the Software Benders. These are the writers, the poets, the bards. They've gone from creating experiences with words in ancient languages to using new languages like Java or C++.

The pixel benders are the painters, from the caves of France to the post-impressionists, and on through photography, videography and animation.

And of course, the sound benders are the musicians from their didgeridoos to their digital synthesizers. The internet experience and the video game experience brings together all of this.

Perhaps this provides a useful way to help get youth to work on their pixel bending and sound bending.