Glogster in the Classroom

I previously posted about Glogster for Education. But I have learned more and wanted to share that information with you as well as ideas for using it in your classroom. Hope this helps!

Glogster For Education is a GREAT tool to use in your classroom.  It is important that you make sure that your firewall is cleared for you to use the site fully though.  I know that you can run into a problem with being able to type on the blog.  You can do every other feature, but you cannot add text.

It is also important that if you request your students to print their glog that you make sure they do not have text that is longer then the area they used to type the information in, because it won't print.

Now, lets discuss Glogster for Education.  Through this website you can create a virtual class, FOR FREE.  You can include up to 200 students.  When you create your class and input your students it creates a unique Username and Password for each student that consists of numbers and letters.  Students can change their password, but the Username will stay the same.  They can change their Screen name though.  I suggest first name and last name so that you can easily track them.  As they work on their project, you have a Teacher Screen where you can see their progress.  This way you can easily monitor where they are on their project.  They can't lie and say they aren't finished when they really are, and you can make sure they are not including anything inappropriate.

Glogster is a virtual Posterboard.  So the possibilities are endless and they are easy to present.  If you have a webpage, they are also very easy to post to your own webpage as well.  You can see a sample of my own in my other blog.
So, How can you use Glogster in your Classroom?  Take all those projects you used to have students do on a Poster Board and have them do it on a Glog.

• Create a Virtual Collage from images, audio, and video from the web.
  
• Create a step by step glog of a math problem or concept
  
• Create a biography of someone in history going down the glog as they get older
  
• Create a timeline of events
  
• Showcase an experiment in class
  
• Give directions on how to do something.
  
• Create a review of a book, movie, restaurant, play, etc.
  
• Create a glog for pages in a yearbook
  
• Create a glog about an event for the school news or newspaper
  
• Create a Compare and Contrast Glog
  
• Create a Vocabulary Glog for your students
  
• Create a Glog Syllabus
  
• Create a Glog Chapter Review for chapters of a textbook (Would make a great end of the year activity)
  
• Create a "Who Am I" Glog to get to know your students.  Great Icebreaker
  
• Create a Family Tree Glog

I could keep going....but you get the idea!  Here is my sample....

SchoolForge

SchoolForge.net is website dedicated to offering free software for schools.  The software is normally Open Source.  The website offers 7 different categories for you to search for this open source material.  Those categories are then broken up into sub categories. 
There is Multimedia software that is available for 3D Animation, Graphic Editing, Players, Sound and Video Editing.  There is Antivirus and Spyware software.  There is also Education Software that provides games and edutainment.  There are Office Tools Software that is available for desktop publishing, Office Applications, and Text Editing.  Utlities and Drivers is another section that focuses on Archive, CDROM/DVD, Drivers, Networking Tools, and Security.   Finally there is Web-Based Software, which is all the rage because of Web 2.0.  You can find software for Learning Management, Library Management, and Student Information Systems as well.

Before using any of this and downloading anything, you should probably check with your school and district about how they feel about Freeware and Open Source Software.  I have seen some of the software available on this site and know many districts in other states that are looking at Open Source software for their school systems as a way to save money.

See what there might be available that will assist you in your classroom, school, or district.

Edublog Awards Part II

Recently, as in last week, I nominated some of my favorite blogs.  Recently all the nominations made by edubloggers all over the world are being shared.  This would be a great way for you to view some of those other edubloggers I was talking about that I have yet to visit.

The Edublog Awards have created a widget that tracks the web for "2009 Edublog Awards"  You can view other peoples nominations very easily through this feed.  Check out all the nominations...when you have time and see what other people see as great and useable resources.