Reflection Blog About Glogster in the Classroom

Reflection Blog About Glogster in the Classroom

Glogster is a really neat tool that educators can use in the classroom which can easily change and transform how a student works through a project or completes an assignment for a class.  It is different and definitely adds a ‘fun’ factor to the educational process.  It also fosters creativity in our students.  Gardner states in his book that “the creating mind breaks new ground.  It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers.” (Gardner, 2006, p. 3)  I believe that the use of Glogster does just that.  It definitely is a new idea – students are working to create solutions to assignments, projects, presentations, and/or lessons that they might have in non-traditional ways.  A student who might present a project using Glogster as his/her visual piece versus one who created a poster would most definitely pique the attention of the students and teacher as thinking outside the box and being creative.  It is a new way of thinking and is one that I believe our teachers need to embrace to foster creativity in our students and to give them alternative ways to create solutions to projects and assignments.  Students want different ways to do work, assignments and projects in school.  I’ve seen it first-hand from when I was in the classroom or when I currently visit classrooms to work on technology issues.  You can see it in the faces and hear it in the voices of the students when the teacher explains to them the same kind of project with the same type of visual they’ve used time and time again.  The students want something different and I could see using Glogster to have the students create cool ‘posters’:

• showcasing what they have learned as a review to a unit;
• as visuals for projects that they have to present to the class; and
• for an assignment that requires web resources one could create a glog with rich media sources

In Ohio, we are currently still using technology standards adopted in 2003.  We are switching in the future to the Common Core State Standards.  The use of a Glogster project could easily address several of those standards, such as the one I created for this week’s project.  Some of the content standards in technology from the state of Ohio which are addressed with creativity and the use of Glogster are:

• Evaluate a variety of creativity-enhancing techniques.
• Discuss ways that technology is linked to creativity and innovation.
• Evaluate a variety of creativity-enhancing techniques.

It’s an innovative tool for students to use, is definitely one of many differing creativity tools and techniques available to them and could easily be used when needing to evaluate different kinds of creativity tools.  Glogster is a tool that I had fun learning how to use and wish I was still in the classroom to share it with my students.

References:

Gardner, H. (2006). Five Minds for the Future. Harvard Business School Press. Boston, Massachusetts.

Ohio’s 2003 academic content standards in technology.  Retrieved November 24, 2012 from http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=1707&ContentID=1279&Content=134232.