Glogging

=media type="custom" key="4211561"= = = =**Glogging**= During the course of this semester I came across the [|Glog.]. Glogster is a web 2.0 platform that easily allows users to upload photos, videos, text, audio and more to create a unique online, interactive poster .It is a tool that really inspired me, and I immediately came up with lots of ideas for use in the foreign language classroom.

Multimodality
As opposed to the traditional poster mainly consisting of texts and images, the glog may comprise several modalities such as a mix of graphics, photos, videos, music and text. This appliance also allows you to hyperlink, enabling collective text production. Due to this variety of modalities the students are able to increase information output all the while staying within the 'frame' of the poster.

Accessability
It is possible to keep these glogs private, but the fact that you might share your profile, showing your creations to the public by linking it up to most web 2.0 applications such as Wikis, blogs, Facebook, Youtube, etc., makes these digital posters more accessible than the oldfashioned ones.Once a glog is saved, it is given a web address. A glog also has an embed code so it can be used as a web widget on your website, blog, or wiki. The students may look at or show off their individual or collective work at school, at home, wherever they are. The life of the poster is not limited to the time it is posted on the wall of some classroom. Parents may see their children's work!

Creativity
Glogster claims this to be ' a new and creative digital outlet for educators to help keep students ENGAGED and make learning more fun'. I tend to agree with this statement. This digital tool challenges the students' creativity. It is simple and straightforward to use, its interface designed to introduce basic concepts to students providing ample variety in backgrounds,fonts, colors, frames, etc. Still, it allows creative students to excel, enabling them to upload own links and images. Using such a tool will make our students more enthusiastic about making posters for learning purposes...and the teachers don't have to worry that the scissors might be gone, the scotch tape empty and the markers dried out!

Educational
Knowing that we are supposed to make our students digitally competent, this is surely a good way to introduce digital tools in the classroom. My students had not heard of Glogster before I introduced it to them, and I haven come across other Norwegian teachers that have made use of this tool in their teaching. Though, I think it is just a matter of time before my colleagues in teaching see the true potential of this digital tool, as it is seen as such by [|teachers abroad].

Being aware of its educational potential, Glogster has expanded and created it's own virtual, digital platform for teaching. Teachers that register with [|Glogster EDU] will be able to create an account to which they may add up to 200 student accounts. Glogster provides the teacher with student user names and passwords, ensuring a private platform that can be monitored by the teacher. One of the greatest asset of this digital tool is that it allows for various collaborative work and joint efforts through its publishing and sharing mechanisms. The powerpoint below gives you a thorough introduction to glogster's educational potential. media type="custom" key="4175631" 

Assessment
Glogster opens up for student assessment through a five-star scale below each glog. For educational purposes I don't think that is sufficient so I would suggest rubrics or checklists for that.this being such a new tool for educational purposes, I haven't found any rubrics made for that purpose as of yet, so in my teaching I used one common rubric for assessing both powerpoints, moviemaker presentation, photostories, and glogs. I did not find that efficient enough, so I have some work cut out for myself there.

Personal experience
Personally, I have had my students make poetry presentations using glogs, and, of course, I have tried making one of my own. I have written a blogpost about glogging, and I have discussed it in my text about assessing multimodal poetry presentations.Follow the trail through my glogging experience, starting [|HERE].