Glogster, the interactive poster platform

Glogster can be a great interactive presentation tool in the classroom. You can design your whole poster from scratch or you can choose from many templates with different design. Once you register you can add text, graphics, image, wall, audio and video. For graphics, and image you can add yours or choose from Glogster's options. Although you can add as many text as would like to, because of its nature it works best with listening,speaking and pronunciation tasks. If you have the option to use SartBoard, student using their hands would have even more fun. Therefore this interactive platform supports the visual, kinesthetic and auditory learning styles.

For starters Russell Stannard's training video for is a very good start. Here is the link from his website www.teachertrainigvideos.com: Glogster training video

Creating posters is fun but can be very time-consuming. However, the website has it own library called 'Glogpedia', where people can share contents. There are 'glogs' created in many kinds of topics, e.g.: social studies, maths, music, languages, fitness etc. There's a subtopic even for English language learners. The glogs are so eye-catching, that even before introducing the topic students will be hooked.

It is also a good tool for the student to collaborate on a certain topic. Needless to say, students have to be computer literate to do that, so I wouldn't use it with students younger than 8. It if you pay for the basic 'Elementary' licence you can add 30 students to your account to be able to create posters. This way you can monitor and also comment on their work. Using a 'glog' as a tool for a lesson plan students will learn presentation skills in an indirect way. After the lesson they can be asked to do their mini presentation with Glogster or on a piece of paper. Using Glogster they also improve their research and IT skills; how to look for trusted information on the web, where to look for pictures and videos, how to embed videos and pictures to your poster.

As the posters are internet-based time has to be spent on technical preparation and it is always worth to try out the poster in advance of the class. Also you should always have a backup plan if technology would let you down. This can be done mostly by printing the poster and downloading the audio, audio-visual tasks on your laptop.

This is my first Glog. I ceated it for students of age 8, not complete beginners. I would use this Glog as a supplement after a 60 minute-class of introducing the topic of the seaside. I designed this poster to use it in two 30-minute classes. At the end of the class students would make their own mini presentations about what they've learnt during the two classes. They could also record their presentation with e.g. Vocaroo, which allows students to make a recording not longer than 5 minute. With the same tool you can give feedback to them and\or reuse, recycle the recordings for another task in the future.