I just finished reading Margery Williams’ “The Velveteen Rabbit” to my young niece. It is her favorite book and the book like the rabbit in the story is getting pretty shabby, but it is still such a beautiful, meaningful book and just as poignant as the first day that my mother read it to me. As I dim the light the words echo in my mind . . .
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.
It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
What a wonderful story. It is an analogy of how I feel about creating an online classroom. I don’t want it to just contain proper text and content or proper formatting I want it to have personalities and feelings.
In the book, the velveteen rabbit becomes a real living rabbit at the end and visits the boy. I want to do whatever it takes to breathe life into my online classroom so that students enjoy visiting, chatting and freely exchanging thoughts and ideas so that it can become a REAL classroom experience, one that they can refer back to and one that evokes pleasant memories of a relaxed learning environment.
I think this is the single most important and most difficult element of online classrooms to successfully achieve. After you understand that, you must work hard to offer many differently shaded rooms of learning where individual students can walk through and congregate in and get comfortable with the learning style that suits their needs.
You also know that although you must create different opportunities and venues for different learning styles, you must also infuse a spirit into that online classroom that will meld students into a singular REAL unique entity that exhibits a well worn comfortable atmosphere where they feel alive and where communication flows freely and easily.
The perfect REAL online classroom won’t feel forced or stilted, it won’t feel campy or contrived, it will feel natural and easy as the discussions and chat rooms continually generate “AHA” moments and “OH NO” feelings, and comforting reassurance from other students and guidance from encouraging instructors.
But just as the skin horse said, “It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time.”
This is encouraging for a novice like me, because I know that it will take me awhile to be comfortable enough with all of the teaching methods and learning styles for them to become second nature and to not feel manufactured and plastic.
I will have to work hard at making the learning comfortable and inviting to all learners especially those who approach with trepidation.
I always have to remember that every student who enters my online classroom may be coming to my tiny room in cyberspace as a first time online learner.
The atmosphere may be as scary and unfamiliar as that first day of on ground school was for me when everything and everyone seemed so daunting and unfamiliar.
I have to work at creating the same warmth that I felt from the smile of my first on ground teacher as she made me grow and develop a sense of belonging. That is an important part of the online environment---the moment when students realize that they are integral parts of making an online classroom REAL, that they truly belong.
Their foibles, their thoughts not always so gingerly stated, their mistakes, their uniqueness, these things are all part of making it REAL. Imperfection and impatience, excitement and elation, candor and cohesion, small words and big ideas, languish and levity, doubts and dilemmas, missteps and giant leaps---there is room for all of these; in fact they are needed if I am to ever hope to make my online classroom REAL.
I am busy now searching for the right “chairs” that will be comfortable and suitable for all visitors and the right brew that will be inviting to everyone who knocks at the door and enters with a wee bit of reluctance and a dab of fear.
There has to be a big fireplace where people can congregate with others and feel the warmth of the ideas as they are heaped upon the fire to fuel the flame and heat the room. A fire that burns brightly enough to illuminate the room and cast large shadows that will create memories and a valuable learning exchange and with flames that leap and dance excitedly toward the ceiling and draw other students near.
If the elements are right, students will feel comfortable enough to visit often and to take off their coats and sit awhile and exchange ideas and REAL learning will take place. Hopefully they will leave an authentic part of themselves behind when they leave and that part will be valuable to the next learner. Maybe just because of my intense love of learning, it can become REAL for someone else.
I know my online classroom may not be the most elaborate or the most eloquent, it may not have “things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle”, but I hope that the carpet in the entry is well worn and the comfortable chairs show their constant use and may admittedly sometimes appear shabby, because as the skin horse so aptly put it, “But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.
It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
What a wonderful story. It is an analogy of how I feel about creating an online classroom. I don’t want it to just contain proper text and content or proper formatting I want it to have personalities and feelings.
In the book, the velveteen rabbit becomes a real living rabbit at the end and visits the boy. I want to do whatever it takes to breathe life into my online classroom so that students enjoy visiting, chatting and freely exchanging thoughts and ideas so that it can become a REAL classroom experience, one that they can refer back to and one that evokes pleasant memories of a relaxed learning environment.
I think this is the single most important and most difficult element of online classrooms to successfully achieve. After you understand that, you must work hard to offer many differently shaded rooms of learning where individual students can walk through and congregate in and get comfortable with the learning style that suits their needs.
You also know that although you must create different opportunities and venues for different learning styles, you must also infuse a spirit into that online classroom that will meld students into a singular REAL unique entity that exhibits a well worn comfortable atmosphere where they feel alive and where communication flows freely and easily.
The perfect REAL online classroom won’t feel forced or stilted, it won’t feel campy or contrived, it will feel natural and easy as the discussions and chat rooms continually generate “AHA” moments and “OH NO” feelings, and comforting reassurance from other students and guidance from encouraging instructors.
But just as the skin horse said, “It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time.”
This is encouraging for a novice like me, because I know that it will take me awhile to be comfortable enough with all of the teaching methods and learning styles for them to become second nature and to not feel manufactured and plastic.
I will have to work hard at making the learning comfortable and inviting to all learners especially those who approach with trepidation.
I always have to remember that every student who enters my online classroom may be coming to my tiny room in cyberspace as a first time online learner.
The atmosphere may be as scary and unfamiliar as that first day of on ground school was for me when everything and everyone seemed so daunting and unfamiliar.
I have to work at creating the same warmth that I felt from the smile of my first on ground teacher as she made me grow and develop a sense of belonging. That is an important part of the online environment---the moment when students realize that they are integral parts of making an online classroom REAL, that they truly belong.
Their foibles, their thoughts not always so gingerly stated, their mistakes, their uniqueness, these things are all part of making it REAL. Imperfection and impatience, excitement and elation, candor and cohesion, small words and big ideas, languish and levity, doubts and dilemmas, missteps and giant leaps---there is room for all of these; in fact they are needed if I am to ever hope to make my online classroom REAL.
I am busy now searching for the right “chairs” that will be comfortable and suitable for all visitors and the right brew that will be inviting to everyone who knocks at the door and enters with a wee bit of reluctance and a dab of fear.
There has to be a big fireplace where people can congregate with others and feel the warmth of the ideas as they are heaped upon the fire to fuel the flame and heat the room. A fire that burns brightly enough to illuminate the room and cast large shadows that will create memories and a valuable learning exchange and with flames that leap and dance excitedly toward the ceiling and draw other students near.
If the elements are right, students will feel comfortable enough to visit often and to take off their coats and sit awhile and exchange ideas and REAL learning will take place. Hopefully they will leave an authentic part of themselves behind when they leave and that part will be valuable to the next learner. Maybe just because of my intense love of learning, it can become REAL for someone else.
I know my online classroom may not be the most elaborate or the most eloquent, it may not have “things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle”, but I hope that the carpet in the entry is well worn and the comfortable chairs show their constant use and may admittedly sometimes appear shabby, because as the skin horse so aptly put it, “But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
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