Group three technologies- PMI of Glogster

  PMI

Pluses

1. Glogster is a great platform to showcase students work.
2. It uses video, audio, graphics, animations, and images.
3. Combining these mediums it allows student to bring their work to life.
4. Its not static. Students can have access to the same glogster to combine all their works together.
5. Great for collaborative projects.
6. Parents/guardians can be provided access to interact with their childs projects
7. Simple to use. 
8. Flexible to cater for all different projects or interests, as well as learning styles.
9. Works within elearning frameworks of constructivism.
10. Can be put into a wiki, site, or blog
11. Fosters creativity, higher order thinking and is engaging.
12. Multiple uses on one account.

Minuses

1. Initial page takes time to create and set up
2. Can be seen from the public
3. Implications of legal and ethical issues arise from public nature of glogster
4. While the basic version is good, to use better features requires a fee, which makes it less attractive.
5. Can put too much info on the one page. 
6. The teacher could become complacent and not encourage critical thought or utilise the benefits of  this creation tool.

Interesting

1. Could pioneer how students create works for assessments. 
2. Rewarding work, especially if something fantastic is accidentally created.

How could I use this in a primary school context?

As glogster is versatile, I believe that its uses would only be limited by my imagination. I think this will present the greatest stumbling block to my teaching. Glogster could clearly be used as a teaching tool, and assessment tool. The teaching context could involve a number of scaffold educational activities, from documenting a interactive page of excursions, to personal works expressing a students creativity in any given KLA. Because the nature is essentially mulitimodal, that is talking in images, sounds and texts, students would be compelled to communicate using the 'new literacies'.

To put it into a context, last year my child did a unit of work on health and nutrition. They learnt this topic through reading about being healthy, learning about the hierarchy of foods, discussed what constitutes a healthy and active lifestyle and cooked healthy snack foods. They did a class collage of images cut out of magazines depicting what they thought it looked liked to be healthy. They also participated in foot races and other silly games. Through my uneducated eyes that seem to cover about half of the KLAs required to be taught. Imagine if they my son's teachers incorporated that unit into glogster. It could include video of the kids in action, either cooking or playing around. Students could record what they think being healthy is about with vodcasts. Their favourite books could be uploaded into a reading list for parents to peruse. Sections on recipes, and links to free family activities could be posted, to encourage further exploration of the topic at home. Thats just some of the things I can think of now. I'm sure anybody reading this could come up with something else. Within all of this, is the use of ICT's in the classroom as a tool to aids in creating a effective elearning experience.

This example is one way to use glogster in the classroom. I found a glogster page of a class in the US that used glogster to showcase the topic of Christmas. It contained vodcasts of students discussing their Christmas trees and was then put into the teachers wiki. What a great way to engage the class, combining Christmas and digital devices in one- genius!

Overall, I think glogster is my preferred presentation tool because its so flexible and is created to target learners from P-12 and engage them. Why fight what the kids gravitate towards? I'm not.

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