Assessment 2... Glogster

I was right at the end of my analysis of using Glogster, within five seconds I had deleted the entire page, raced to get it back in time before auto save happened and no...all gone!!! 


I will begin... AGAIN! 


I created a Glogster account a few weeks ago and had a play around with it but did nothing more. I then looked at Power Point, thinking this is what I used whilst I was in education. Prezi on the other hand was a completely new concept though when I had a go at it, it was great but still thought no, Glogster is the one that has caught my eye. It is simple yet effective and can be used for all ages. After reading the education page Glogster created for educators to read up on the potential of Glogster as a learning  tool. I felt this would be worth learning about for future use! 
This webpage offers the reader key features, benefits and ways to use Glogster EDU in the classroom.

"A Glog is an interactive visual platform in which users create a “poster or web page” containing multimedia elements including: text, audio, video, images, graphics, drawings, and data."

I flew down to Brisbane this week to have all four wisdom teeth taken out and stayed with my family. My youngest sister is in grade eight and currently learning how to write book reviews. Rather than I carrying out the task of creating a poster as an example of my understanding of this technology, I decided to be cheeky and ask Olivia to create a poster on how to write a book review. It worked out well as I was not feeling my best and it helped Olivia recall the information she had learnt that day at school and display it in a way she would remember it in the future. I watched her create it to see how well she could adapt to this new technology that she had never heard of before.

Olivia was getting tired and slightly agitated toward the end of making the poster and I had to prompt her to look at embedding images and for relative videos online. This could have been because it was myself who had asked her to create it and not her teacher or that it was just before her bed time. Or Glogster did not keep her engaged long enough for her to take full advantage of its learning potential.

This is what Olivia created!  

Objective

• Diverse range of technologies can be embedded in the posters to cater for visual or auditory learners
• Fun
• Multiple Learning styles catered for
• Can be used for any subject or topic                                               
• Has own education resource library
• Need to research to discover other teachers opinions and how they have used Glogster EDU.

Intuitive

• A new way to express creativity fun learning experience
• Drives new interest levels around subjects that may have been seen as "boring" before
• Fosters teamwork and collaboration with classmates
•  Adds audiovisual aspects to traditionally text-oriented subjects
•  can be used as class presentations, projects or group work done by collaboration or individual assessment.
• Improves student- teacher relationships by allowing both to explore web 2.0 and learning concepts together

Negative

• Time Consuming
• Needs to be saved regularly 
• Dependant on adobe flash supportive software

Creative

• Attractive to all school years
• Promotes the use of technology
• wide range of uses though need to decide which are the most effective for subject and age group 
• Need to think how this tool can promote and enhance higher order thinking

Positive

• With regards to the safety and ethical concerns one would have for the students, the content and actions can be monitored by the teacher closely. 
• Online interaction within Glogster is limited to the classroom only
• It engages students to be more creative and further develop their IT skills
• Flexible in that it can be embedded in blogs and wikis

Process

• A great learning tool that can be used for any topic regardless of subject
• An effective tool when it comes to displaying what students have learnt but how else can it be used?

The great thing about reading into Glogster, is that I passed on this information to a friend who is a primary school teacher and she has just created a lesson for her grade 6 class!