Glogster Lesson

This is just a sample Glog that I made in class when showing the class how to make their own and embed it:

Delicious

This is a screenshot of some of my Delicious bookmarks:

Wordle

Glogster

Our class was split up into teams to work on a Web 2.0 tool that we were assigned. Chelcie and I were assigned to learn how to use Glogster, and will later present to the class what we learned and teach them how to use it.

Glogster is a site used for making virtual posters.
This is the poster Chelcie and I made:


I really enjoyed getting to experience the Glogster site and learning how to make my own "graphical blog." For the most part, it went very well because the site was easy to use and pretty self explanatory. The only difficulty I faced was that sometimes the specific buttons or graphics I was looking for were hard to find. For example, when we wanted to add an animated arrow to the poster, we had a lot of trouble finding one. I think that a search button would have made this a lot more manageable and saved time.

This tool is definitely practical for classroom use. As a teacher, I will be able to incorporate Glogster posters that I have previously made to my lessons. This could make certain subjects much more exciting. Also, I could give parents a link to these Glogs so that the students and parents could look at them together at home.

Next time I use Glogster I probably will do most things the same way. The only thing I can think of that would make it a more successful experience is looking at example Glogs before beginning my own. This time I did not think to look at previous examples, but I think now that I've seen some and used the site everything will go smoothly next time!

Website Evaluation

I evaluated the website Arcademic Skill Builders. It was a difficult process for me because I could not find information about the author(s) or publisher of the site. It was frustrating when I continued to try to use the "contact us" link on the site, but was unable to email them. The application on my computer would not open so I could not find an email address or anything. I did, however, enjoy looking deeper into the website to see what I could find and putting more thought into the site than I normally would.

Website evaluations will be helpful in my profession because I will be able to make sure that the sites I use or send students/parents to are practical, usable, and reliable. I think that this is very important, especially when working with children that are not old enough to figure out whether or not a website is reliable on their own.

Next time, I will try to use websites that make it easier to find out publishing and author information because that is important in deciding whether or not the site is reliable and up to date.