Metamurphism

Be the Box….. Understanding the Online Medium

This page focuses on the nature of the online experience and how this impacts the ways and methods we can use as teachers. The computer is a weird tool, if you think about it. We have these rich interactions with it, but its mostly done in our silence as we gaze at the screen, and tap on a keyboard and gently slide a mouse in little circles . Our bodies are very still. If you weren’t sitting in front of a computer, you’d probably fall asleep. All the essential action is in our minds and they demand stimulation or else they leave. This fundamental neurological fact is what drives the web today. Engage me or I’m gone.

The web is box of media…. so be the box

As teachers in the online world, we need to understand this and use simple methods that suite the online medium and holds peoples’ attention and stimulates their minds to remain present . The web is a box of media on a computer screen, so as the saying goes….. be the box. In otherwords, make efforts to be a media type, such as a news format, a story, a character, a game, a simulation, anything that has a narrative quality to it even in the smallest dose will keep the users mind from revolting against being on your website.

Seek to be media relevant…. be the media

The results will be to take content and give it a context and a personality and a meaning. I think when we treat our content as raw material for online media we have the ability to enliven some of the irrelevant and dying curricullums we currently teach. We’ll also discover the power of our own imaginations outside the real time boundaries of the classroom. We can express ourselves in ways that students will find engaging and inspiring. We can, in someways, be more ourselves as teachers.

In my course, Planning 10, I’ve built a simulation around my content of job search, career research, financial planning and healthy living. And I’ve created characters who present content, roam through the site and are posters in my room. I’ve become both real and virtual and I’m discovering the value of being the box.

Here are some of the videos I’ve created. Please remember that this is me and I would never say do what I’m doing. My point is that you can find your way that works for you so the box fits who you are.

resumes part 1
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-3885011043238591450

resumes part 2
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8612694389249642178

cover letters
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=8208744442802376121

interviews part 1
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=7423775096484496613