In NCLC 130, we explored all nine of the competencies in various ways. Activities that really explored the competencies were the visits to the museums and a class debate. Through visits to the museums, we were able to have a better understanding of different cultures and their values.
 
       Exploring the valuing and global perspective competencies, the African Art museum accomplished that the most. In the African Art museums, we saw that masks and costumes were important parts of culture. In American culture, masks are definitely not used for important aspects of life. Also, all of the statues and wood carvings take a lot of work and effort for the Africans to finish. So, even for the Disney collection in this museum, it costs a lot of money to buy certain items, and have those items shipped to certain places. For anyone, African art can be rare items sometimes. The items are also in this museum, which is far away from Africa. Certain items have spiritual meaning for the Africans, so when items go overseas, they lose their meaning only here. We also questions how people can live off of this culture because it is so different from our culture in America. We, in America, have the advantage of being able to access many different resources. Certain things are very abundant here in America, but those items might be scarce in Africa. Africans may think that an item here has much importance to them, but here in America, we don't think anything of importance in that certain item.
         Also, visiting the museums helped us explore the group interaction, communication, and aesthetic response competencies. We worked together in groups to get each other to the museums. If certain people, such as myself, didn't know their way around Washington D.C., others would make sure we got to the specified museum. We were able to communicate by organizing times of when people were leaving campus to catch the metro and shuttles. We also talked among our peers in order to complete the written part of the assignment. We also appreciated the art because we discussed why certain pieces of art were placed in certain locations. The one wing of the National Art Museum contained more modern art, while the other wing had more classical art. Overall, in the museums, we explored multiple competencies at one time.

Another instance of exploring multiple competencies was in a class debate.This explored the critical thinking, problem-solving, effective citizenship, and informaton technology competencies. Prior to the debate, we had listened to a presentation about globalization, and we had watched a movie. Then, we also had assigned readings for homework the previous night. Our assignment was to come up with an argument either against or for globalization. We were experiencing the effective citizenship competency by researching globalization because globalization is something that is affecting today's world. We were becoming more informed about the international problems of today. Since my group was on the anti-globalization side, we were also able to explore more of the problem-solving competency. We looked at all the different aspects that were affecting the third world countries. Then, we came up with ways on how to solve these problems that third world countries are facing today. Also, we experienced the critical thinking part by differenciating humane arguments from factual arguments. We tried to have both because you cannot have an argument based off of only opinions. Lastly, we also were allowed to look up a few other facts on the computer, which included the information technology part of it. This allowed us to look on databases and be able to find scholarly resources that pertained to our argument.
                                                                             

Based on the movie The Wizard of Oz
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