And here's my SWOT analysis to explore glogs in more detail:
Strength
·
Multimodal
– audio, images, video, text, web links
·
Easy
to use and navigate (simple tools bar)
·
Can
embed into blog and wiki
·
Fun!
·
Can
personalise glog.
·
Lots
of borders, images (including animated images), fonts etc to choose from.
·
Can
easily change colours of text or backgrounds once they have been inserted.
·
Can
select discipline and year level
·
Can
tag students (or others)
·
Can
attach Word documents
·
Private
and “safe” – teacher controls account and student glogs restricted to “class
only” viewing
·
Can
create presentation with glogs
·
Various
templates to use, including assignment sheet, handouts.
|
Weakness
·
Can’t
embed PowerPoint – have to convert to a movie.
·
Glogster
EDU requires paid subscription after 30 day trial.
|
Opportunities
·
I
think students will engage with glogs because of the multimodal allowances.
·
Easy
to add references by attaching Word document – helps students to ensure they
appropriately reference work.
·
Use
in place of traditional poster projects.
·
Contains
all info about one topic in one place – can create new glogs for each new
topic of work.
|
Threats
·
Students
may not develop their own thoughts – potential to just embed resources they
have found on the web.
·
As
an online resource, need to be cautious of unethical, unsafe and illegal
content – ensure students understand and comply with appropriate behaviour
standards.
·
No
avenue in glog for scaffolding – will need to be done in another tool (eg
wiki).
|
I love
glogs. I have never used (or heard of) one
before starting the GDLT program, and was skeptical at the start, but now that
I have used them a few times, I am rapt.
There is so much potential in education for glogs, particularly in the
digital age we live in. Glogs are
interactive, multimodal, fun, engaging ways to create a resource on a
topic. As a teacher, we can create a
glog as a resource for the students (eg literacy and numeracy in the kitchen
for Home Economics students), or better yet, the students can create their own
glog for a project or assignment. In
Home Economics, students could create a glog on a nutrition related issue such
as diabetes. They could interview people
who have diabetes and embed the videos (or audio) in the glog. They could put in photos of complications of
diabetes (shock factor of missing toes etc), they can include text about what
is diabetes, how it is caused, and how it is treated. They could provide links to websites like
Diabetes Australia for the reader to find out more about the condition. And all presented in a creative, engaging and
personalised way. The functions within
the tool (range of colours, images, borders, frames to choose from) allow the
student (or teacher) to be creative in the design of the glog. GlogsterEDU also has the option of creating a
presentation from the class glogs – this could be a novel way to present the
class’s work over a unit.
However, in order
for effective learning to occur, scaffolding needs to be put in place by the
teacher. Otherwise, the glog may end up
being a ‘cut and paste’ locating exercise of resources on the web, rather than
a higher order designing and creating activity (as per Bloom’s Revised
Taxonomy). The glog itself does not seem
to lend itself to scaffolding, so another document or tool (eg a wiki) will
probably need to be developed for the scaffolding (and the planning for the
project).
The other
potential risk of glogs is that unlike blogs and wikis, glogs do not allow for
regular commenting from peers and teachers (as the glog doesn’t go “live” until
the author clicks publish). Because of
this, there is the potential that students will not collaborate and review each
other’s work and be able to add value to their learning. The scaffolding will be crucial here to encourage
students to collaborate with their peers and people outside the classroom. This opens opportunities for linkages with
other students in other states or countries who may be researching the same
topic, and also linkages with the community as students can engage with people
who may be experts in the field, or who may have experienced first-hand the
topic (in the case of diabetes, it may be people in the community who have diabetes).
Like all ICT
tools, students must follow ethical, safe and legal guidelines when working on their
glog (see earlier post for more detailed considerations when working online). Because it will be a resource that
will be shared with the rest of the class, particular attention should be made
to ensure students do not use defamatory or abusive language in general and
towards another student. In addition, students
need to ensure they comply with copyright laws, and reference all material
adequately. The glog has the added
benefit of allowing documents to be attached to the glog. I have found these attachments as a convenient
and transparent way to reference the glog.
This way, the sources of images or video etc are there, but do not take
away from the impact of the glog (I would imagine the glog would look very
cluttered and messy if references were included under every image or video
etc). However, saying that, my references would not upload to
this glog, so I have included the references at the bottom of this post.
Glog references
Glog references
- Cake. [Photograph] Retrieved from http://in-my-moments.blogspot.com.au/
- Government, Queensland (Producer). (17 March 2013). Literacy and Numeracy Fact Sheet: Supporting your child. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/literacyandnumeracy/pdf/factsheet-l-n.pdf
- Numeracy in the kitchen - cooking with fractions.wmv. (2011, 14 March 2013). [Video file] Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZVsYQb0CE0&list=WLzAL48ET3432NPZkAIFw543dTLAUsLY7p
No comments:
Post a Comment