Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers: How Glogster can be used to promote learning in the classroom

Thursday, February 10, 2011

How Glogster can be used to promote learning in the classroom

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices, and demonstrate how these best practices can be applied in the real (i.e. physical) and virtual (i.e. online) classroom for both teaching and teacher training. The combination of face to face instruction in a physical setting and online learning is called blended learning. In this section of the blog we will describe how the internet can serve as a supplemental resource for instruction and the mentoring of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators. In this post we will continue our discussion on how students in a Judaic Studies blended learning classroom can use Glogster to promote learning.

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has a interactive white board (i.e. SMART Board, Promethean, etc.), a Tablet PC (also called a Slate or Blade), a computer presenter or computer with internet access attached to an LCD projector in the classroom. It would be ideal if students or mentees had access to their own laptop computers as well.

Note: Although Glogster can be applied in the Judaic Studies blended learning classroom, it can be also be used for training pre-service and in-service Jewish educators for professional or staff development. It is our hope that Jewish educators around the globe will form an online community of practice, a CoP, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession, to enhance the delivery of instruction and training of Jewish educators. For example, here is a CoP you might want to join.

Note: Glogster can also be used in a face to face classroom without adding the online component.

What is Glogster?

According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glogster Glogster is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters, or glogs. The glog, short for graphical blog, is an interactive multimedia image. It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content.[1] Glogster was founded in 2007. Currently this social network has hundreds of thousands registered users. Glogster provides an environment to design interactive posters. The user inserts text, images, photos, audio (MP3), videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation.[2] Glogster is based on flash elements.[3] Posters can be shared with other people. Glogs can also be exported and saved to computer-compatible formats. [4] Each visitor can integrate dynamic multi-sensory resources into traditionally text-oriented tasks.

Where is Glogster located on the web?

http://www.glogster.com/

Note: Jewish educators should use Glogster EDU at this url: http://edu.glogster.com/what-is-glogster-edu/

How can you place the pictures that others have uploaded onto Glogster onto your Glogster account?

To place other people's pictures on your Glogster account you will need their permission. The easiest way to gain permission to add the pictures of others is to learn if their photos have a Creative Commons License.

How can Glogster be used in the classroom?

Click on the links below which describe how Glogster can be utilized in the classroom to promote learning.