In The Room (Free Template)

I love collages. Not just amazing collage art a la punk zines, but any collages that create new art and movement out of existing art. As a teenager I used to make collages on the walls of my room; I would cut up music magazine, old copies of National Geographic, and newspapers. These collages were often funny, serious, and irreverent all at the same time. I would sneak in jokes just for me and be amazed when friends recognized my jokes. I took a required art course in college and had the option to make my own final project in the course. So I, of course, chose to make a collage. The instructor was fair in his grade, giving me a good grade, but I will never forget that he said that is pretty sure that I have kenophobia, or fear of empty spaces.

Either way, I think that the walls of the spaces we inhabit, work or personal, mean something, particularly for our students. It is a place to express what we care about in a visual way and to make a statement about who we are as a person. Sharing art as a means of personal expression.

Or in this template’s case, sharing art as a means of learning expression. This template is meant to act as the starting point for a miniature diorama. If you read last week’s post on gaming, I mentioned my love for my local creative reuse store, the Clever Octopus. During one of my visits I found carpet samples for super cheap in one of their bins. The samples on top happened to be a shade of red that matched my childhood memories of the reading circle carpet in my kindergarten class. I had a quick flash of a miniature classroom with relics of my learning process. It sparked me to create a template for the walls, so that students could create digital walls and physical room then print out the walls or use AR to present the room physically to their classmates.

These miniature dioramas could easily be a collection for a novel or poem project, a science lab of a famous scientists, a museum stroll, feelings about a difficult topic, and more. Giving students the freedom to build their ‘room’ both physically and digitally, or digitally only, can provide tremendous choice and voice in how they show their learning to not only you, their teacher, but also to their fellow students.

Check out the template below. It is a Google force copy slide deck. Feel free to change out the wood paneling for another design if you so desire (better yet have your students change it out).