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Glogster now presents
I use Glogster daily. As a interactive poster/presentation/research tool for my students. As a tool for creating web-based interfaces professionally. And I just gathered my Glogster search posters together as a presentation.
Teachers who are serious Glogsters can now take a next step in sharing, archiving, and organizing their students’–or their own– work.
A recent Glogster newsletter announced two new premium features–presentations and portfolios.
The new Presentation tool:
allows you to create a personalized Glog Show out of your class’ work. Teachers choose a name for their new Presentation, then can add students’ Glogs, their own models, or other interesting content across Glogster EDU with a simple drag-and-drop interface. Presentations are easily shared with parents, colleagues, or other classes, and seamlessly embedded to external sites such as wikis. You can choose your favorite style of Presentation and switch up the style as you see fit.
The new Portfolio feature:
allows you to create a Portfolio of your students’ best Glogs. On an administrative level, the tool is a breeze. Teachers help their students choose their favorite Glogs, and then can easily house them for safekeeping as the student develops. As digital literacy skills become more pertinent in the college admissions process, students become more confident as their collection of Glogs grows.
Current premium users will be able to immediately create presentations & portfolios. Glogster’s Mike Olcott shares instructions:
At the bottom of any Glog, yours, your students, or a Glog you find in the EDU community, there is a link that says “ADD TO PREPARED GLOGS.”
After you’ve added the Glog, when you click on “Create and Manage Presentations” on your Dashboard, you go into the Presentation area, and you’ll see the “Prepared Glogs” waiting to be added to a Presentation. In other words, “Add to Prepared Glogs” is the link that puts a Glog in your Presentation bin, available to be added to a collection.
Presentations and Portfolios can be shared in three display styles: book, flowing sequence, or a cascade.
Mike Olcott led me to these Glog instructionals for the premium features developed by Deena Kelly:
For me, Glogster is one of a handful of creation tools I use nearly every day, one of those tools I would consider budgeting for on a premium basis. For the classroom teacher, Glogster EDU Premium is reasonably priced @ $11.95 per month or $99 for an annual teacher license.
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But I’d like to see a reasonable library/whole school pricing model. In fact, I’d like to see that for all my favorite digital storytelling platforms. I’d like to be able to budget for this each year for full-school access to these important tools, rather than play a different funding game or passcode game with so many different, but granted, wonderful, vendors.
At the high school level, we sometimes have a full class work with one presentation platform, but more and more we encourage them to choose the platform that makes the best sense for communicating the results of their research, their own stories.
Though the new features are aimed at teachers, I would like to see them available for students as well. I’d like to see learners themselves gather together portfolios of their own work or link their Glogs together in presentation of greater depth.
Mike is currently looking into the idea of student access to the new features.
Currently, only teachers can create portfolios and presentations, this seemed the most prudent way to introduce the new features. But Jim (Dachos) and I both agree with you that students would feel that much more empowered to be able to cultivate their own body of work. It’s a great suggestion, perhaps the teacher could decide who culls the best glogs from the bunch. Jim is sending an inquiry up the flagpole today about this capability.
Don’t miss the Glogopedia (examples of effective practice in Glogging) and Glogs in subject categories for ideas for learning activities across the disciplines.
And coming soon for Glogster, the ability to tag and search Glogster elements, and to embed original webcam videos.
Filed under: digital storytelling, websites
About Joyce Valenza
Joyce is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at Rutgers University School of Information and Communication, a technology writer, speaker, blogger and learner. Follow her on Twitter: @joycevalenza
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