Week 5 Reflection - Glogster

This week, I am reflecting on a glogster or glog for short. The most basic way to describe glogster is an interactive online scrapbook. It is also known as an online poster.

Why should classrooms move away from regular scrapbooks and posters, and move towards glogster?

Glogster is an interactive modern tool that can grasp the interest of a child and engage a whole classroom. On a glogster page you can write descriptive blogs, change the colour background or add a picture like setting. You can upload images, videos and music and embed links into your poster. Glogster is giving teachers and students another dimension to explore by adding videos and music to a poster or scrapbook. Regular scrapbooks and posters only contributed to a visual learning style, but glogster is providing a visual and aural learning style, this will give students a better chance of understanding and engaging with the topic.   

Below I have uploaded a basic glogster page of my own, to give you an understanding of the capabilities of glogster.

In a PMI Chart I will discuss the implications of glogster.

Plus	Minus	Interesting
·         Creating Visual and Aural Learning ·         Classroom engagement ·         Students working with a modern tool ·         Could use glogster as an assessment item. ·         Students improving problem solving skills through modern technology ·         Teachers can setup a                glogster education                page to protect                         students on the Internet.	·         Needs Internet access ·         Teachers need to understand glogster to implement it to the class.	·         Anyone can use glogster. ·         You can embed glogster onto blogs and wikis.

   

Glogster is a great web 2.0 tool for classrooms. It is a fun exercise, and is giving students and teachers another way to express creativity and increasing the knowledge data base.

 How could teachers use glogster in the classroom?

Teachers could use glogster as an assessment task. The task could be that the students have to create their own glog page and present their pages in an oral setting. I think presenting a glog in an oral is a positive move, because then the whole class can engage and interact with the music and videos and this will improve student’s communication skills and provide knowledge content in a fun atmosphere. Teachers themselves could create a glog and present it to the class to help explain a topic in the classroom. I have uploaded a YouTube clip below to help explain positives of glogs in the classroom.

As I am studying to be a manual arts teacher, the glog below clearly shows what I could present to my class. I have made a ‘Safety in the Workshop’ glog that I could display before the class even started. This glog would remind students of the safety requirements in the workshop and working with machinery. Another way I could use a glog in my class, is to get every student to create a glog page once a week and at the end of term, every student would have created an online scrapbook to hand in for assessment.

Glogster is an interactive web 2.0 tool ready to transform classrooms.