Glogster: A Unique Creative Tool

Ear­lier this sum­mer I was intro­duced to the edu­ca­tional ver­sion of Glog­ster. For those not famil­iar with the site, Glog­ster is mar­keted as a sort of graphic blog (the site’s tagline is “Poster Your­self”). It has some inter­est­ing fea­tures that also make it a unique tool for stu­dent work. The edu­ca­tion ver­sion allows teach­ers to reg­is­ter up to 200 stu­dent accounts which are all con­nected to each other in a class. Stu­dents can then cre­ate an unlim­ited num­ber of glogs, each of which is a one-​​page inter­ac­tive poster.

Glog cre­ators can embed text, clip art, pho­tos, video, and sound on each page. Each object can also have a live link attached to it. The pages can also be embed­ded into other loca­tions such as blogs and wiki sites (see my class­room wiki as an exam­ple of this). The embed­ded glog is live, so any changes that are made to it at the Glog­ster site appear imme­di­ately wher­ever else you embed it.

So besides “pos­ter­ing them­selves,” what could stu­dents do with Glog­ster? Here are a few ideas. I’m sure these will get you think­ing about others—please share your own ideas in the comments.

1. Cre­at­ing a “Choose Your Own Adven­ture” graphic novel. Each page would be a scene from the story with cer­tain click­able ele­ments that would take the viewer to a new page which con­tin­ues the story.
2. Build a per­sonal port­fo­lio, show­cas­ing links to scanned work, uploaded files, and online work such as blog posts and web sites.
3. Cre­ate a visual glos­sary for a unit or subject.
4. Write an inter­ac­tive, visual book review or char­ac­ter study.
5. Make a click­able dia­gram to illus­trate a con­cept or model a process. Links would take the user to a def­i­n­i­tion, expla­na­tion, or a closer view of that por­tion of the model.
6. Mock up a web site home page.
7. Develop an inter­ac­tive mag­a­zine or newslet­ter. Each page could rep­re­sent a depart­ment, fea­ture, or activ­ity and include pic­tures, video, and text link­ing to sto­ries in a blog or other online publication.
8. Invent a game or puz­zle which includes video, image, sound, and text ele­ments and requires the play­ers to inter­act with them to move.
9. Assem­ble an inter­ac­tive exhibit illus­trat­ing an event or era of his­tory in pic­tures and video.
10. Make a talk­ing sto­ry­book for chil­dren using clips of nar­ra­tion and sound effects attached to pages and images.

Truly cre­ative stu­dents will cer­tainly be able to come up with many more ways of using the site, so let them loose and see what they can do.