Box City: A Fine Supplemental Activity for Art Appreciation

It's been a while since I posted here. The reason for this is due to the many demands a college teacher like myself must attend to. Plus of course the advantage of having a direct online connection with the students via the E-Learning Access Program (ELEAP)that the University of Santo Tomas has been providing for years. Anyway, since starting teaching Art Appreciation under the Humanities and Literature, I've been constantly researching and updating all of our activities. Some I devised my own, the rest are taken from various sources. One of these I owe much to the educators of CUBE, the Center for Understanding the Built Environment. Having glossed over to their website gave me an inspiration. Though I might not have any possible resources to acquire their services, me and my students opted for some alternative materials. To find out more, kindly click on "Byte Me." So here it is: our very own Block City! Our version of the block city is based from two essays:

"Cities, Cultural Theor, Architecture" by Iain Borden

and "Philippine Visual Urban Culture" by Jaymee Siao

By integrating the two essays into one experience, I asked the students to go to certain places like parks, terminals, malls, and the like to investigate how the theories of the two essays were derived at by the authors. It was, for all of us, a widening of our own awareness of our urban environment and through their expressive and visual manifestations, the theories are therefore concluded as valid evidences of the current state of society. And their report required little explanation as the projects actually speak for themselves. So here are some of the other pictures taken during the small, classroom event. Now, I must publicly apologize to CUBE for having adopted their idea of a box city and turning it into a combination of architectural and social study. I must confess that the project had been so successful that the students enjoyed learning a lot about our own urban society.

Actually, the original idea of box city was really meant for preschool to K6 students, and through our project I realized it can also be applicable to K11 and K12 students as well.

And so my many thanks to the students of 3SCL1 for having done a great job!

Next time, I will make sure to improve the rubrics I am trying to devise for this and other interesting projects.

Bye for now!