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Digital Collage and Meaningful Learning

Our goal is to have students learn subject content through the act of creatingwork

of art. As we conceive and craft instructional activities to implement this, it is

important that we stay focused on the type of learning the students will acquire

through the project. Keep in mind Blooms Taxonomy and how it shows that there isa variety of types of learning. Generally portrayed as a pyramid, rote memorization

is shown at the bottom and higher order thinking skills like analysis, evaluation,

and creativity plotted toward the top. While memorization may validly play a role as

part of the overall learning to be achieved, activities that are solely aimed at

memorized items come off as superficial, non-meaningful.

In our work with learning through digital collage, it is effective to have students

focus on an essential question or a defining issue to be answered or addressed

through the creation of the art work. For example, the assignment Do a collage

about Spain would very likely result in student work that presents a collection of

images that are associated with Spain. But while having students learn that in Spain

there are churches and beaches and the people eat Paella and like to attend bull

fights may have some value, thats not really understanding the nation of Spain or

its people or culture very deeply. Nor does the act of collecting a random batch of

images of Spain and putting them on a page offer much in the way of learning how

to learn, think, analyze, understand, or communicate. On the other hand, an

assignment like You are going to create a travel brochure to convince people to go

to Spain instead of another destination. Create a collage to convince people to go

there. Youll have to find out whats special about Spain and communicate that

effectively. Instead of giving people an overview of everything to be found in Spain,

have your brochure address a specific aspect of it. You might choose the food, thearts and culture, the religion, or other distinct aspects of this country to be the

subject of your poster.

The resulting work not only is more focused, but can easily be the basis for

conversation, debate, comparison, and evaluation. It is through such exchanges,

particularly those precipitated through the review of independent work, that groups

of students are afforded great opportunities to make meaning of a selected subject.

The bring all of this about, one very good approach is to create support tools,

graphic organizers, check lists, focus questions, and the like, so that students can

record their reflective thinking and progress on a project as they proceed through it.Here are some examples. However, this approach must be implemented against an

understanding of age/grade level appropriateness. While asking a 6th grader how

his collage will convince a traveler to choose Spain, a 1st grader might do better

with a simpler question requiring him to defend his choice of pictures that explain

the types of people who work in his neighborhood.

1. What answer to our guiding Essential Question does your collage offer?

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2. How does it do that?

3. Can you point out some details that support what you are saying in images?

4. List the 3 images that you feel best help you to make your case?

5. Please explain why you pasted them in the spot they occupy.

6. For each image you included, please explain why you included it. In other

words, what does it say visually?

7. How successful do you feel your collage is at:

Answering the question?

Communicating your answer/ideas?

8. Now that you finished your collage, what do you feel youd like to improve?

9. Are there any images you didnt include but that you wish you could find to

include?

10.Are there ways that you feel you would like to better arrange the collage?

Images that youd like to move or make smaller or larger or change some

other way?