Extension activities - Creating offline collages

Although the collage maker allows students a certain amount of flexibility, they will very quickly realise its limitations.

The logical and most exciting extension activity, therefore, is to create an offline collage using any materials available, for example many newsagencies can supply you with returned magazines from which students can get pictures and letters of the alphabet.

Collage is the technique of pasting materials such as printed, manufactured or ‘found’ objects on to a surface. Sometimes, artists use the collage technique with other mediums such as paint, ink or crayon to create a mixed media work of art. The use of text in a collage can hold the viewer’s attention far longer than a simpler image. Photographs or digital images can be built up and overlapped in a technique known as photomontage.

View examples of collage at  http://www.drstamping.com/collagegallery1.html

View a slide show of collages at  http://www.globalcollage.com/fresh_start/collage_index.html

Ask students to point out techniques they think work well, and try to say why they are so effective. If you give students some advance notice they can collect extra materials to use.

Remind students that they are trying to communicate their ideas about Ketut or themselves, to show that person's identity. Their task is also to use as much Indonesian as possible - words, phrases and even whole sentences can be woven through other images. Advise students to arrange things before fixing them in place and to check accuracy of Indonesian with a dictionary and then with you, before adding that text.

Display finished collages, and as for the  online collages developed within Siapa saya? have students try to decipher or 'read' each others collages before the creator of each one explains the ideas behind their work.