Glogster+Basics

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 * ==What is [|Glogster]?==
 * media type="custom" key="14189738" align="right"Glogster a web based application for creating interactive posters (Glogs) using video, audio, text and graphics. Think of a Glog as a graphic blog.
 * Glogster allows students to creatively express their knowledge and skills in a fun interactive environment.
 * ==Using Glogster EDU ==
 * ==Benefits==
 * While Glogster offers a free version of its application, the educator version is reasonably priced and offers enough advantages to warrant its purchase.
 * Glogster TeacherLight is $29.95 per year for 50 students.
 * Glogster Teacher Premium is $99.00 per year for 200 students.
 * Educator accounts provide a secure and private environment.with premium privacy controls for teachers of students younger than 13.
 * The educator version of the Glogster application allows teachers to see all student work through the teacher's dashboard and students may manage multiple class projects through a single account.
 * Glogster utilizes a very easy to use drag and drop graphical user interface to allow students to link, embed, and upload multimedia resources including files, videos, photos, and audio files to support their chosen theme or subject.
 * Glogs allow students to exercise a great deal of creativity providing a wide variety of backgrounds and texts, as well as the freedom to arrange artifacts in any way they wish.
 * Glogster makes sharing of Glogs easy as Glogs may be easily embedded into wikis, blogs, websites, and learning management systems.
 * Glogster is aligned with National Educational Technology Standards and 21st century skills and provides an excellent means of integrating technology standards and objectives with core curricular standards.
 * Glogster promotes differentiated instruction through a balance between acquisition of factual knowledge, the mastery of concepts and skills, and the imaginative use of multimedia and relevant Internet resource.
 * Students love creating these interactive multimedia web posters, and the use of this tool almost always guarantees student engagement with the material.
 * The use of Glogs in assessment encourage independent creative expression and problem solving.
 * ==Challenges==
 * The educator version is not free, but is very reasonably priced for the single teacher version.
 * The free version of the application may expose students to Glogs with inappropriate or mature themes.
 * There is limited space on the poster itself.
 * Students may be easily distracted from learning task due to the fun nature and variety of materials available in the program.
 * Uploading usernames and passwords may be challenging. Consider changing browsers if you are having difficulty.
 * == Helpful Hints ==
 * Uploading usernames and passwords may be challenging. Some browsers are incompatible with the upload process for Glogster.
 * Set clearly defined expectations about the work you expect. A rubric is very helpful.
 * Although Glogster is easy to use, we recommend that students have some experience with some of the other online tools we have discussed before using Glogster, mainly because students become so enthralled with all the options available in Glogster that they may lose sight of the lesson objectives.
 * Glogster takes longer than the other tools recommended, not because it is difficult to use, but because students become so engrossed in the process of creating their Glogs. Since many of our students do not have computers at home, we have had to carve additional computer lab time out of our schedule for them to work on the Glogs. The excitement, engagement and quality of work we are seeing had convinced us that this is a good use of our precious instructional time.
 * We conduct our Glog assignments under Educational Fair Use Guidelines. We are working on a way to incorporate Credits in our Glogs, but have not decided on the best way to do this as of yet. Students copy URLs of sources in another document for a Works Cited list. We are exploring what other schools do as for as citations for Glog sources.