Glogs, Glogs, Glogs

While this is not the newest tool on the market, I think it is one of the best for educators! Within the past year, glogster has created an education portal for teachers to use with their students. This allows a teacher to create a safe environment for students. Now, students can create their glogs without worrying about running into an inappropriate glog or having an unwanted someone viewing their glogs.

It is so easy to sign-up for an education account. Just visit the edu portion of glogster and set up a class account. If you already have an account, you will want to create a separate account under the edu portal. Glogster will ask you how many student accounts you need and will create the usernames and passwords for you quickly. Within a matter of minutes you will have a separate, private account for each student all integrated within your master account.

An excellent way to display them is to embed the glogs on wikipages. However, there is also a print option and a link option.

There are some great tutorial videos available on creating and embeddinig if you scroll to the bottom of the home page.

Glogs are an amazing tool for your students to use. However, they are also a powerful tool for teachers as well. Use glogs to jazz up your webpage, create a study guide for students, create graphic organizers, host videos and/or audio libraries, create webquests, and much more!

Classroom Ideas:

History
- create timelines (using arrow graphics)
- create historical scrapboks (include pictures,
music, videos, info from the time period)

Language Arts
- create autobiography pages
- book reports
- use as a presentation tool instead of a PowerPoint
- create a poetry glog (find images and music that enhances a poem)

Science
- create an electronic textbook (each student creates a glog around a specific topic from the
chapter)
- create a glog illustrating the steps of the scientific method

Music
- create a glog about a specific composer/artist or genre of music (include sample audio)
- create music library for students around specific composers/artists/genres with some basic
information or links for additional information

Art - host pictures of student artwork

If you have any ideas of your own for using glogster with students, please leave a comment:)


Examples: View a wiki with glogs created by my 5th grade students.



Screen shot of glogster.com/edu taken using kwout.com.

Geocaching!

The PSLA conference is over and it was back to the old grind today. However, I need another couple of days just to sort through and flesh out all of the ideas that are swimming around in my head right now from all the great sessions.

One of my favorite sessions was by Bridget Belardi on geocaching. I had heard of the term before, and knew vaguely what it was, however, I wanted to learn more about integrating it into the classroom. Geocaching is basically a treasure hunt using GPS technology. A cache can be placed at any location and then seekers must use coordinates and GPS devices to pinpoint the location. The direct connection to geography is obvious, but there are many more ways to use geocaching in the classroom.

The only equipment you need is a GPS device (Garmin was recommended) or an iPhone with Groundspeak's geocaching app. The official geocaching website is great for personal use or to have a generic class acount, but the presenter did not recommend that each student have their own account.

Obviously this is only a project in the making. I plan on talking to my geography teachers tomorrow and seeing if we can write up a proposal to purchase some GPS devices. I would love to be able to implement it next year!

Classroom Ideas:
ideas from Geocaching with Kids
ideas from Science Spot

Additional Resources:
Edcaching wiki
Geocaching (Belardi's webpage)
Educaching

Geocaching photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/90146879@N00/52849909/.