Glogster!

So I literally stumbled upon this site tonight (without the help of StumbleUpon!)  I was browsing through some of the links Mike has on is ICT at BU site, and going through some of the real-life examples provided.  I took a look at Mrs. Cassidy’s Class site, where I saw that they were going to be using Glogster.  The name itself catches your attention, so I instantly wanted to find out what this site was all about and how Mrs. Cassidy could be using it in her Early Years classes.  I see that Glogster has been around for a few years now; however I personally have never come across it or heard of it.

Glogster in the simplest terms is an online poster.  But not just any poster – you can easily add links, text, graphics, images, videos, recordings, and music!  Basically you add anything you want to your Glog!  You can use your own images, videos, & podcasts, or you can search the web and copy and paste the URL of the images or videos you would like and that image or video appears in your Glog!  Seems like there would be endless possibilities and that students could express their creativity and have fun doing so!  Glogster is easy enough to use that students as young as Grade 1 are successfully using it.  This link will take to an example of a Glog focused on Egypt: http://wiltsen.edu.glogster.com/egypt-country-report/

There is also the GlogsterEDU specifically designed for teachers - yay for us!  The cool part about GlogsterEDU is that the teacher creates the account and specifies how many students will be using it (can support up to 200 students per teacher).  Glogster then generates a username and password for each student that the teacher gives out.  The really cool thing is then the teacher easily has access to each student’s Glog assignments.  No need to hand anything in or print anything off! 

Posters are a common assignment for students in various classes.  I think this site provides a fresh approach to a classic assignment and applies the technologies that are now available to us.  Students will be able to develop a very interactive poster or Glog that pulls information from a variety of sources or they can make it highly personal by using all their own photos and creating their own podcasts and video to embed within their Glogs.

I briefly played around with Glogster and it certainly is easy and quick to use.  You can play around and try creating Glogs without registering.  To check it out, explore, and create your very first Glog visit http://edu.glogster.com/  Oh and did I mention it is free??