Welcome to GlogsterEDU Week!

I have been meaning to write about GlogsterEDU for some time, but have put it off because, though a wonderful and easy resource to use, it requires a series of posts to really do it justice. It was hard to commit. But here we go- It's GlogsterEDU week on SpeechTechie!

GlogsterEDU is a free (with some nice paid features) site based on the concept of "poster yourself." Yes, the idea is to offer an online, electronic and easy-to-use poster-maker for teachers and students to publish their cool creations related to the curriculum. Glogster started out more as a social network for teens and still exists that way, (like blogging, but graphic, hence the name) but has wisely embraced the education market and is fast becoming an extremely popular alternative to "Death by PowerPoint" assignments in schools.

Why Posters? We've probably all tried a poster project with our students at some point. Posters are a fun and engaging project to embark on with students, and clearly are language-based, what with their ability to incorporate lots of information and visuals. However, they can be prohibitively time-consuming if one wishes to have the kids design anything worth displaying, and with our population frequently having fine-motor issues limiting their writing and drawing skills...it can be tough. GlogsterEDU provides an interface that allows students (and teachers) to create well-designed projects in a fraction of the time of a traditional poster. Additionally, as a 21st-century poster-creator, GlogsterEDU allows you to embed audio, video, and links to websites to make your project truly interactive.  The main idea for SLPs is that GlogsterEDU can be one way to organize your visuals, text and links for an activity, series of activities, or theme, or help students to consolidate their learning about a topic in a graphic and engaging way!

This week, I am going to be covering GlogsterEDU with screencasts on how to use it, and a number of examples of how it can be used in SLP practice. To begin with, let's check out their "Best of" gallery, itself a Glog. Click around and explore the categories below to see what's possible with GlogsterEDU! Some of my favorites after exploring these examples:

A Night at the Museum: Students produce first-person narratives from the POV of famous people!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss: A good example of how a Glog can provide a context to explore a topic, and a landing page for students to direct their own learning.

The Outsiders: A Glog can be an engaging way to summarize, highlight story grammar and visualize any book.

What Can You See Underwater: Glogs are a great way to explore and break down the language of any curriculum area and focus on categories.

And best of all, GlogsterEDU so easy to use, you'll be able to involve students in the process of creating Glogs. Tune in this week to see how!

So, here's the plan:
Tuesday: How to set up your Glogster account, create a new Glog and add text.
Wednesday: Adding images and graphics.
Thursday: Adding links, audio and video.
Fri: A few last features and some more examples and ideas of Glogs related to SLP practice (If you have any you'd like to share, please email me!)