Glogster

Many people are familiar with Glogster and it's uses in the classroom.

The kids love it and it is a highly effective tool for teaching kids elements of good design. I tend to teach this via trial and error. When students present work and other students comment "it's hard to see your writing because of your colours" etc etc it helps to affirm ideas and concepts about what makes a good poster visually.

I started using Glogster in the class last year, but certain images in Glogster were not the best for classroom use. We got around this by "banning" certain pages of animations and images, which the kids strictly adhered to otherwise we would stop using it in the class. Luckily Glogster worked with several educators including the wonderful Lenva and brought out a Glogster edu version.

The edu version is fantastic as it allows you to build a virtual classroom, where students can create work and comment on each others glogs. The plus to this is that it is more contained than the Glogster version and allows you to exist as a class without commenting and connections with others. Also all images and animations are appropriate to the classroom setting.

You can head over to our class blog to see versions of their work using Glogster Edu. They are beginning to become more visually aware of what posters need and what elements might look fun, but actually hinder the audiences ability to be able to read their work.

Your glogs can be printed, sent or easily embedded into any wiki or blog easily. We are also using them to create homepages for Knowledge Net.