Post One

Our group further discussed the five topics brought up by the class: student actions, student development, ongoing process, contextual environment and teacher actions. We talked about how important it is for students to not only work with the teacher, but with their peers as well as in the community. These types of interactions will result in the class developing useful skills through projects that are more applicable to their everyday life. Delacruz writes about the role of technology in art classrooms. She also brings up available class time as a concern that especially affects technology-based projects such as photography and graphic design. Students need to first learn the technology and then learn how to express themselves using it. The topic that resonated most with me, and the subject of my reading by Elizabeth M. Delacruz, was contextual environment. Things such as class size and duration can greatly affect the types and numbers of projects a teacher can introduce. Another concern Delacruz writes about which we also brought up in class is how a school's budget can affect a classroom. In the instance of technology, an inadequate budget can mean that classrooms are equipped with antiquated technology and, at times, incompatible technologies. As a result, the classrooms are less able to connect with a global community as well as effectively use the technologies they do have. What I took away from this class was how many different factors can affect your classroom dynamic and how you have to pay attention to all of them in order to be a good, effective teacher.