The "wonder" stage with Glogster

Glogster offers many possibilities for demonstrating learning.  “Creativity + Convenience = Glogster”  extols the virtues of Glogster and describes various ways to incorporate it into teaching practice. One teacher interviewed by Kist (2010) notes that Facebook is a way of “bringing the learning to [the students’] world...not creating a second place that we inflict on them” (Moller cited in Kist, 2010, p. 99). Glogster would be another way to bring learning to the students’ world by incorporating 21^st century modes of communication such as photos, video and podcasts. By allowing students to demonstrate their learning using multi-modal literacies (Kist, 2010) I could address not only the needs of the digital natives but of multiple learning styles in my library classes. Using Glogster posters to illustrate already planned classroom projects would truly be a 21^st century way of celebrating learning. Glogster might also be the perfect medium for creating online evidence folders of student work to promote the importance of the library program (Richardson, 2010). 

 Glog Ideas:

• I am always looking for ways to apply the Web 2.0 tools I learn about to my Kindergarten teaching practice as well as my library practice.  This technological advent calendar idea from Kelly Tenkely's iLearn Technology blog  gave me the idea of using Glogster to create an alphabet Glog with different videos, stories, activities etc. for each letter.
• I have been finding so many useful ideas on Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers blog.  This post contains a great example of using Glogster for creating digtal book reports. 
• Here is an example of using a Glog for a history project (very clever). 
• My most exciting Glogster discovery so far was this Glog about search tools for kids (including primary) created by Joyce Valenza (have I mentioned that I am a huge fan?). I shared this with two other teachers on my school staff and posted it to my library home page.  I also shared it with a grade 2/3 class in library today - they were very excited.  Only time will tell if anyone actually uses the ideas.

So my next task is to create a glog of my own and see where my learning takes me on my quest to create and support even more methods for differentiated instruction and expressing learning at my alternative school.

References 

Kist, W. (2010). The socially networked classroom. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. 3^rd ed. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.