Learning Through the Lens

Glogster

Getting Started 

Before beginning this course, I had never heard of Glogster before.  When I first looked into it, Glogster immediately appealed to my senses.  The combination of visual and auditory stimuli in an environment that allows creativity and artistry with no need to pick up a pencil was right up my alley.  I can be a very creative person but have difficulties with the whole paper and pencil venue.

I can remember being a student and struggling with creating posters for projects.  I would rather hop on the computer, type in my titles and information, print off pictures and paste it all onto the poster than even think about picking up a pencil.  My artistic abilities with a pencil are very limited and my desire to have things look just so would make creating a poster by hand very intimidating and frustrating.

Visual Literacy

According to Felten (2008), we live in a culture where "images no longer exist primarily to entertain and illustrate.  Rather they are becoming central to communication and meaning making" (pg. 60).  We live in a society where images are everywhere, from the home computer and TV to newspapers and computers to almost any available public space.  There is no escaping from images. 

Glogster allows us to make meaning and display our learning not only through text, but the visual and auditory aspects of pictures, videos and sound clips.

Glogster

Glogster provides a platform where students can create "interactive posters loaded with text, graphics, music, videos and more."  According to McTigue and Croix (2010), it is important to pay attention to graphics for the following reasons: "graphics can contain important and unique information that is not in text, graphics more easily represent certain types of information than text, graphics can serve as organizational tools for learning."

Learning the Tool
Before getting started, I watched a Detailed Tutorial on Glogster EDU - Online Teaching and Learning Tool.


 

This was a good place to get started and give me a couple of idea.  From there, it took only a matter of minutes to get signed up for my own account and to get started.  I explored a variety of sample Glogsters in order to get the feeling for what I would be creating.  The types and designs of Glogsters that I viewed differed drastically, which gave me the impression that I had a lot of creative freedom when it would come time to creating my own Glogster presentation.  Initially, I took the approach of just exploring.  I did not intend to make anything in particular, I just wanted to explore the tools and see what I could create.  


The tool itself was very straight forward.  Choose the category (graphics, text, image, video, sound, etc.) and let loose!  The possibilities were endless as everything could be personalized from size, direction, color, etc. 


When it came to uploading, linking or embedding outside sources, once again, it was very straightforward.  With many of the other tools that I have explored, I have found myself turning to Google to get answers to questions that I just can not figure out.  With Glogster, I did not have to turn to Google because everything just happened and worked so smoothly that there was no frustration, anxiety or difficulties.  


The Experience
From my exploration, Glogster has been very user friendly and has allowed me a creative space to share text, images, videos, etc.  Although I have not created a formal presentation yet, I like the creative possibilities that Glogster allows for.  Glogster will now be my jumping board for presenting Twitter as a professional development tool to my colleagues at an upcoming staff meeting.


Stay tuned...

Resources

Felten, P. (2008). Visual literacy. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 40(6-), 60-64. 

McTigue, E., & Croix, A. (2010). Visual literacy in science. Science Scope, 33(9), 17-22.