Glogster

http://catnei.edu.glogster.com/glog-of-tech/

This week I made a Glogster. Previously I'd never explored the tool and the only time I'd ever seen one was when I looked at another elearner's Blog: http://heidislearningspace.blogspot.com/
What is Glogster? And does it have a place in the classroom?
Glogster is a website which enables you to create multimedia posters online. Pictures, videos, text, graphics and music can be added with a surprisingly large amount of flexibility. The posters can be kept private or shared with a global audience. I was so excited! I could see so much opportunity for this site in education! It even has an EDU section especially for educators.
It's free, it's possibilities are vast, it enables creators to be creative, it could be used as a way of presenting information or as an assessment task. My Glogster is above, I created mine to be about technology and education, because I thought that would be appropriate. But to see the potential of Glogster I've included some Glogsters made by others and found on the Glogster data base (see below).



While it does have a lot of good points, there are some cons. Another elearner was frustrated by it and believed it didn't suit his learning style (see http://hamishbowden1.blogspot.com/2011/08/glogster.html) but also pointed out that it is very easy to spend a lot of time on the aesthetics without much regard to creating content. For this reason I believe that their use should be limited and not a regular activity to be done in every lesson. It could be an activity reserved for those who are early finishes or as a motivating tool or reward (eg. "If we get all this work done today, next lesson we will spend creating Glogsters about the novel we are studying"). It could be used as an assignment task for art, IT or even English. For English units that feature poetry, films or novels a Glogster could be created about a theme central to the literature to help consolidate learning as to what a theme is and also to begin analysing texts.
Presenting Glogster about topics to the class could also be a way of incoparating Glogsters into learning. In some instances Glogster could replace OHT sheets, Powerpoints or whiteboard use and accompany a learning manager as the main presenational tool.
When creating a Glogster it is still important to consider copyright issues and privacy issues. All works should be correctly attributed to their creators/owners and text should not be copied en mass. Privacy is an important issue as once these Glogsters have been shared they are public access and can be re shared through other sites by random people: as have two of the Glogsters on this Blog. Names, addresses, schools, photos and even birthdays should not be shared publicly on applications such as Glogster and this needs to be considered when creating public Glogsters.