Module 6

Glogster

I had a great lesson with year 2 today.  Working with half the class (the other half will do it tomorrow) each student created a successful glog.  On the weekend I had a play around with glogster and created a model of what I wanted my students to create.

  I signed myself and my students up to glogster edu.  It was relatively easy to add students especially when filling in the excel spreadsheet and uploading the information to the web. It was also beneficial that I could create their nickname and password to ensure they would be able to access their account without to much hassle.  I also created step by step instructions for the students to follow to create their own glog.  The students were asked to create a glog for an alliteration they had written in a previous English lesson.  Check out some of the glogs my students created:

The students really enjoyed using glogster.  It was very user friendly and the students had great results.  We printed their glogs to hang in the classroom.  With older students it would be great to insert audio and video clips and embed their glogs in a blog.  The benefit of glogster is students can extend themselves as much as they are able to- great for differentiation.

Bubble.us

I consider myself a kind of visual learner.  I like to use mind maps as a way to sort out my ideas.  I was disappointed by bubble.us.  Although it was easy to use it could not do many things that I wanted it to do.  I use webspiration to create mind maps and I find that it has better mind mapping capabilities.  However bubble.us is very easy to use and sign up to.  (which is great for the primary classroom).  It is also very easy to save created mind maps and therefore share them.  I have not completely ruled out  bubble.us but I would be interested in exploring other web 2.0 mind mapping applications.

Until next time happy blogging

Cheers

Maria