Artifacts to Define Us

Learning about history and culture is something that can be very boring to students. Especially if this teaching is made through lecture. But in class, we participated in an activity that would make us think about the artifacts that are left behind by others. For one class, we were to take in 5 atrifacts that describes us. For some, the assigment was easier than for others. To the left are pictures of some of the artifacts that classmates took. There were some people that could not leave their technology behind, while others took with them objects related to their hobbies. For the next class, our assigment was to place artifacts in a shoebox that we would take along with us if we had 10 minutes to pack before we had to leave and move to another place. This shoebox could not be extremely big, as we had to really think about what we wanted to include. When we arrived in class, we were to share our box with others. We discovered things about our classmates that we did not know about. Things that are not apparent at first sight, but are truly important to that person. There were also many people that decided to take along with them objects that they would need for survival. With this activity, we were able to build yet more classroom community. We were able to learn so much about objects that might not be valuable to some, but are significant to others. In the end, we reached one conclusion, most of us cherish moments more than we cherish tangible objects.