Glogster

What is Glogster?

Glogster is "a unique social network based on the creation and sharing of Glogs - interactive posters loaded with text, graphics, music, videos, and more. Glogster’s goal was to provide an outlet for unlimited creative expression online" (Glogster, 2012).

Glogster seems like it would be a great tool to use in the classroom.  Glogster is a unique website that allows students to create a digital poster.  The content of the poster would be able to show each student's knowledge about a certain topic in any subject area.  The range of topics that Glogster can be used for is unlimited.  Students can create posters through Glogster in elementary school, middle school, college, and beyond.  Students can use Glogster to give a presentation to a class instead of  PowerPoint.

It can also be used as a teaching tool, which would allow a teacher to easily gather videos and pictures in one place to introduce a new topic or introduce vocabulary to the class.  Teachers can use Glogster for lessons or lectures.

I love watching students' creativity shine and this platform allows students the opportunity to their imagination and style to create a digital poster.  Glogster is a useful and user friendly option for both teachers and students to use.

This is a helpful resource of frequently asked questions about Glogster.

The Complete Glogster Educator's User Guide is another resource to help teachers who are getting started with Glogster.

Little Bird Tales Example

Since my class is currently working on creating how-to books, I created my digital book using Little Bird Tales in the same how-to format, while using transition words.  This could be an activity that my students next year create digitally instead of on paper.  This way the students could also practice their fluency while they record their step by step directions into the program.  As I listed previously, there are many ways that my students could use this web 2.0 tool this year as well.

Here is my example:
How To Build A Snowman

Every author has the option of sharing their story publicly, emailing their story to someone, saving it as a PDF or posting the link on a website. Here are a few other cute examples that were shared on the website under 'Public Tales':

We Can Add Doubles      This is a cute digital book that the teacher created by uploading digital images of student drawings that go along with adding rhymes that the students created.

How Can We Get The Rainbow      This example shows that this tool is so user friendly even first grade students can use create digital stories successfully.

Little Bird Tales

As I was exploring Web 2.0 tools, I came across www.littlebirdtales.com.

This website looks like it could be a great tool in the classroom to allow students to create digital books.  This website allows students to draw or upload images to include in their digital books.  There is an option for students to record their their voice reading the text that they typed in.  After the story is finished, you can watch the whole story.

There are many possibilities about different types of assignments that would work well with this type of activity. A few ideas that come to mind are allowing students to create:

Reading/Writing Topics

• How-To Books
• Opinion Writing
• Personal Narratives
• Book Summaries
• Sequencing events from a story
• Autobiographies
• A biography of a famous person of the student's choice
• A tradition in their home
•  Poetry Collection
• All about me (Beginning of the year)
• How to treat others
• Fairy Tales
• Mysteries
• Folktales

Math Topics

• Adding rhymes
• Multiplying rhymes
• Geometry Examples in everyday life
• A story using fractions
• Creating word problems for others to solve
• How to do a long division problem
• Multiplying Songs
• Math tips and tricks 

 Science Topics

• How shadows are formed
• How plants grow
• The life cycle of a frog
• The life cycle of a butterfly
• Science vocabulary

 These lists could keep going on forever, but I think my point is clear.  This tool can be used in many different ways for many different grade levels and topics.  It could even be done at the end of a unit about different things that the child learned about during the unit.  Each page would be a different fact about what that student learned about the topic.

Here is a video about Little Bird Tales.

Here is a great resource that is helpful for answering questions that users may come across.

Welcome to my Web 2.0 Blog!

Welcome to my Web 2.0 Blog!  I am excited to learn about more tools that may be fun to use in my classroom.