Glogster (www.glogster.com) is a new presentation tool that I found. Glogster's motto is "poster yourself." This free online website allows you to create an interactive poster. You can add text, photos, music, animation, graphics, and videos to your poster.
The first step is to sign up for a free account and then you can start creating your own poster. If you are interested with playing around with this website, you don't have to sign up, but when you decide to use it you can register then. Then you click on the dashboard to add text boxes, images, videos, sounds and set your background. There are tons of themes available, so there will be something for everyone on there. Here is a link to a tutorial video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80NISdsoouE. It is really important to constantly save your work. The button says "save and publish," but you can always go back and edit it when you sign in to your account.
One of the advantages of using glogster is that the students have a blank page to create their poster and they can easily add different medias. The students are so creative and can use new websites easily. The students can also work on it from home without having to save it to a flashdrive and when they turn it in, they just send me a web address instead of saving their PowerPoint and taking up space on our district network.
As with any presentational tool, like PowerPoint, students tend to put too much on their glogster. If they are using it for a presentation, they have to make sure that the graphics, fonts, etc don't distract the audience. Some of the glogs are difficult to read because they have crazy backgrounds. A few of the glogs that I checked out when I first started using it had loud music, but thankfully you can turn it off.
Last week I had my students create a presentation about a French region. They had three options for their visual. They could create a traditional PowerPoint, create a prezi presentation, or use glogster. I showed them their options and many students were excited about the new tool. About 2/3 of the class created a PowerPoint presentation and the other 1/3 created a glogster. I thought it was great that some students chose to use glogster because it changed things up instead of just having 20 PowerPoints. The students commented that they liked using it and that they will use it again in the future.
I will definitely allow my students to use glogster again in the future. I like giving them options and allowing them to do what they are comfortable with.
I'm intrigued by Glogster. I'm trying to think of ways I could use it in a college English class. There have been times I've done "poster sessions" in class, usually with a text that students are really struggling with and we need to bring it back to basics. I've done a poster session, for instance, with Slaughterhouse-Five because students were struggling with the time jumps, and were also having a hard time seeing how the time jumps connected thematically. A visual representation helped! I've also heard of people having students do chapter presentations, and so forth. Glogster might be a way to do this and (as you say) avoid a ton of PowerPoints. I really like that they wouldn't need to save them on a flashdrive, too. Easy access is a big deal! And it's great, as you mention, to give students options. I'm wondering if your students figured Glogster out easily enough on their own, or if you did an in-class tutorial? Or did you just point them to the YouTube tutorial? Did they work on the French Region project in a computer lab in class, or on their own as homework?
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a great tool. I remember a classmate of mine who used something similar for one of her projects. She had experience in graphic arts so it was common place for her but it was new to all the rest of us (teachers) in the class. I've been meaning to e-mail her to find out what the program was. Glogster doesn't sound familiar but sounds like something I'm definitely interested in learning more about. I really like giving students choices when doing projects. I'm curious, did any of your students choose Prezi? We are starting a project tomorrow in my class and I've given the students the choice between Power Point and Prezi. None of them had even heard of Prezi so I'm curious to see if they will challenge themselves to try something new...probably not! I'm going to check out Glogster and maybe I will throw that in as another project option before we start. Did your students have any challenges with learning to use Glogster? Thanks for introducing me to this new tool:)
ReplyDeleteJessica,
ReplyDeleteI think it is so great that you are using all the knowledge you have gained in this class and have shared it with your students. I also applaud you for allowing your students to use different types of media to complete projects with. I totally agree with you that sitting through 20 Powerpoints would be monotonous!! Since I have a passion for art, this seems like a tool I would really like. Also being a visual learner, I think this would add great dimension to any project. Thanks for much for sharing this!
Thank you for sharing this. I love the idea of giving learners options. Glogster seems like a perfect alternative to PowerPoint. I like that they turn in links to their projects. Parents can see the work their child completed as well. With a PowerPoint project, parents may not see the final product if it was done on a computer at school. I will need to look into this.
ReplyDeleteJessica...
ReplyDeleteThis sounds very cool!! Like you had said, it allows students to be creative and sometimes the students who have difficulty in preparing a written report or speech have difficulty getting their message out, even though they know the material. This gives another great outlet for students...and anything that can help that gets my seal of approval!!!