Our Global Pixel Art Portrait Mural, With Over 1000 Student Portraits, Was A Very Special Part Of The ISTELive 2023 Discovery Museum!

 

Being a teacher librarian, I love to empower students to use their creativity to express themselves while collaborating and connecting to others. 

This spring, I put together the Global Pixel Art Portrait Mural Project that brought together teachers, librarians and students from around the world as we celebrated community, uniqueness and unity. In fact, this project was for the newest addition to the annual ISTE Conference. 

It is called the ISTELive Discovery Museum. 

As shared online, 

Experience the creative spirit of the ISTE community at the ISTELive Discovery Museum! New to ISTELive, the Discovery Museum is a space where you can participate in hands-on creative activities and check out visual works that express the impact of learning created by the ISTE community. 

It was amazing and filled with beautiful projects from other educators around the world in the ISTELive Discovery Museum. 

Let me tell you about our project. 

When I first heard about the ISTELive Discovery Museum, 

I thought it would be really neat to use the Pixel Art platform from our friends at StickTogether.  

                     

This is a free digital tools that anyone can use. You can give the StickTogether Pixel Art platform a try here. 

Our students at Van Meter Community School in Iowa have been using the Pixel Art platform for all kinds of projects this year. 

One of my favorite ways we have used it is by having our students create their self portraits with the StickTogether pixel stickers. 

The 1st graders even created a portrait to be included in the Pixel Portrait Thankfulness Mural. You can read all about it here in this post. 

This got me thinking when I was brainstorming project ideas for the ISTELive 2023 Discovery Museum.  I thought, Why not do the Pixel Art Portraits on a global level and ask others to join us! 

I put together the Global Pixel Art Portrait Mural Project and shared it with friends and new friends around the world.  You can read about the project in the first post here.

So many teachers and librarians were very excited and started to create pixel art portraits with their students. 

As they finished, the work was added to the Global Pixel Art Portrait Padlet that you will find here. 

As they were added, I took each one and added it to the collage templates I had set up in Pic Monkey.  I was able to fit over 1000 portraits into the spaces. 

I sent these digital files to the amazing people in charge of the ISTELive Discovery Museum and they enlarged up onto giant foam core pieces that made up the installation for our mural. 

As I walked up to the Global Pixel Art Portrait Mural at ISTE, I was in tears. It was even more impactful and special in person. I wish all of the students and educators who helped created it could have been there.

We love how this project celebrates community, uniqueness and community with...

....students around the world. 

And how it inspired the educators and others at ISTE to dream up projects like this for their students too.

You can watch the video I created for the ISTE Discovery Museum here.  You can also scan the QR Code above. 

It includes this very special video from our friends who participated in Ukraine. 

This video was included in the Stories of Creation which was also part of the Discovery Museum. 

My friend Joyce and I were so excited to watch it when we visited the space. 

You can also scan this QR Code to learn more about all of the works on display.

I included this slide, which gives links to the various resources too. 

I would love to thank everyone who participated in this very special project.  We are going to make this an an annual project that will take place each spring.  

I hope others join us next year too. 

And a very special thank you to the talented and creative organizers of the ISTELive Discovery Museum. It was one of my all-time favorite parts of ISTE and one that will make a difference all throughout the year.