Glogster

This week in my curriculum theory class, we had the opportunity to play around with a website program called Glogster.  Prior to this assignment, I had never even heard of this website, but I am so excited that I had the chance to use it - the application to my future classroom is endless!

First of all, what is Glogster?
Imagine an informative poster on a specific topic, the kind you'd hang on your classroom wall to talk about sentence structure, chemical bonds, or a historical event.  Now imagine you can alter the appearance and content of that poster as you see fit for your classroom.  Sounds nice, but nothing special, right?  What if that poster was interactive: you could watch a video playing on the poster, or touch a picture and have more information or activities related to the poster topic pop up?  And for my next trick, you can allow your students to make their own posters just like this for interactive presentations!

Seriously, this thing is awesome.

For my class, I had to make a Glogster about a chosen curriculum theorist.  We had to include embedded objects like videos, links, and documents, making it more than just a pretty digitally-created informational poster.  I was able to control everything from the layout, the appearance, the graphics, everything.  And it's extremely user-friendly, save for the short pause when the Glog autosaves.  It's definitely a program I would want to use with my classroom, and I've already started thinking of great ways to use it:

• Student created projects: book reports, author biographies
• Group work - multiple students collaborating on one Glog
• Presenting assignments and step-by-step instructions to students with interactive pieces for student reference
• Jigsaw teaching

Here's a screen shot of my Glogster (about Maria Montessori, an amazing educational theorist). Click on it and it will take you directly to my Glogster so you can interact with it and see how it works:

I guess it's another tool I can add to my classroom tech toolbag!