Glogster: an online scrapbook
Glogsters are multimodal online scrapbooks which give students the opportunity to “interact, collaborate, and publish with peers or others employing a variety of digital environments and media” (Glogster Poster Yourself, 2011, p. 8).
PMI of Glogster in my teaching context
Pluses
· Collaboration with other students on ideas
· Interactive design and construction
· Involves visual literacy and engages in a range of learning styles
· Links to other websites and can be embedded into a blog or wiki
· Can embed images, videos, music and be formatted with a range of backgrounds
· Save it and then revise it
· Requires problem solving and complex cognitive skills
· Flexible and versatile – creativity can be expressed freely
· Students take pride in work and gain self-esteem from their work
· Powerful visual tool
Minuses
· Can be seen as time-consuming
· Reliability – sometimes the site crashes which can be frustrating
· Students may spend too much time developing the presentational side of the scrapbook poster rather than adding complex and developed content
· The posters can look busy and hard to follow
· Copyright laws – images and videos uploaded without attribution
· Ethical and safe practice to ensure children are not placed in danger and exploited and are kept safe while exploring the online space
· Low-socio economic families may not have a computer, so students have to finish assignments at lunchtime
· Appropriate material must be managed, even to the extent that glogster posters do not contain violent backgrounds or suggest offensive behaviour.
Interests
· Glogster incorporates other digital literacies, such as image and sound. Glogster is a tool as well as a presentational device for other digital tools.
· Make sure students are aware of the consequences that once content is uploaded to the Glogster page or the web for that matter, it is now on the public realm.
The benefits of Glogster are the ability to create a page with content that can be interactive and obtain facets that a visually appealing and can incorporate audio as well. It can be structured to suit the needs of the topic and information, whether you want your students to read information about a topic, create their own page on a topic, or participate in activities that you have designed. Glogster is a scrapbook of ideas and activities and Bamford “suggests that a lack of awareness of visual literacy skills will impede students ability to communicate effectively, since visual images are becoming the predominant form of communication across a range of learning and teaching resources delivered across a range of media and formats." (Bamford, 2004, p.2 as cited in as cited in EducationWorld: The educator’s best friend, 2011, para. 5). Visual literacy is an integral part of today’s society and Glogster is an effective medium which enhances visual development. In my teaching areas, I believe that Glogster will be able to engage my students in activities relating to English. With such topics as Shakespeare, students can create their own Glogster page to portray their critical thinking or use of ideas surrounding Shakespeare’s plays in a visual context.
Glogster is a presentational tool which I will choose to use in my classroom, due to the fact that it is interactive and can be embedded into blogs, wikis and websites easily and is accessible to my students. In reading about the learning theories such as constructivism and Prensky’s (2005) articles on engaging students rather than enraging, indicates to me that students who use media and digital tools connect with, create and transform their own ideas. They learn best when they are actively involved in their learning where creativity can prevail.
Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to ‘play’, create and connect with digital tools such as Glogster, so they connect with the ideas and feel a sense of ownership with their work. This in turn leads to the high end of the cognitive ladder where they can reflect and critique what they have learnt. Reflection is a valuable learning concept for students to see how they did at an activity, where they found their strengths and weaknesses, thus taking ownership of their work. However, if teachers don’t provide the relevant digital pedagogies for students to learn from then they have nothing to reflect on.
Connect, Extend, Challenge thinking routine of Glogster
· CONNECT: How are the ideas and information presented CONNECTED to what you already knew?
I already knew that visual literacy is an important skill in today’s society and the ability to deconstruct images is important. I knew that students need to be engaged and motivated in order to learn, and ICTs like Glogster provide the avenue for this to happen.
· EXTEND: What new ideas did you get that EXTENDED or pushed your thinking in new directions?
The new ideas that I formed were how effective Glogster can be as a digital learning tool. At first I thought Glogster was a time consuming exercise and that students would spend too much time on the presentation aspects rather than designing content for their Glogster page. However, once I began to ‘play’ with Glogster I realised the power of combining image and sound, the flexibility of formatting my own page, the versatility of Glogster in different teaching styles and genres. For instance Glogster can be used for classroom activities, providing classroom content, title pages, activity posters and student assignments that can be uploaded to blogs or websites.
· CHALLENGE: What is still CHALLENGING or confusing for you to get your mind around? What questions, wonderings or puzzles do you now have?
The only challenge I have with Glogster is its capacity to function, I noticed as I was exploring the tool that it took along time to load information and sometimes crashed which can be frustrating and time-consuming. So, I am worried about the reliability that Glogster has for my students. I, as a pre-service teacher, need to understand when it is appropriate to use Glogster and any ICT for that matter and when it is not. I need to “evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks” (Glogster Poster Yourself, 2011, p. 5). I can’t wait for EPL, so I can get a measure on how things work and when technologies and digital tools are introduced into the classroom and for what reasons.
Here is a design I have created on Glogster for a Year 8 or 9 social studies class.
References
EducationWorld: The educator’s best friend. (2011). Hooked on glogster: poster 2.0.
Retrieved 5 April 2011 from:
Glogster Poster Yourself. (2011). Educator Resource Library. Retrieved 5 April 2011
Prensky, M. (2005). Engage me or enrage me, what today’s learners demand, 60-64.
Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0553.pdf
Love it Nadine! Great idea!!
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