Edu 2.0 & Glogster

This quarter I decided to start my 8th grade Internet class with a new project. Our district recently started using an online learning management system called Edu 2.0. Using this system, teachers and students can post and retrieve lessons and assignments online. They can communicate with one another via email and chat, hold discussions through forums and discussion assignments, collaborate, and much, much more. And best of all, it's free! I decided to dive right in and have my students complete their new assignment directly through this website.

The assignment is to create a 6th Grade Survival Guide for incoming 6th graders using Glogster. Glogster is another amazing, free online program that allows students to create multimedia blogs. They are formatted like posters--complete with photos, videos, animated clip art, and text. They’re a great way for students to showcase knowledge on any topic. I decided to make this a group project for my students to teach teamwork skills as well as to help my students get to know one another, as I have a whole new class. If you’d like to check out the lesson and rubric, visit my TechieTeacher Yahoo group! (Look in the Files section.)

Edu 2.0 lends itself nicely to team projects. You can specify a team assignment and arrange students into groups. This allows you to grade them as a team very easily. You can also set up forums to facilitate group communication. It’s actually quite a bit of fun, both for me and the students.

In exploring resources for this project, I came across a great website called Voki that allows you to create talking avatars. You can add your avatar to your website, blog, etc. They're a great way for your students to share small snippets of information in a fun way. Check mine out!




The only down side is that while you can embed the video into your own website or blog, there doesn’t seem to be a way to download the video file, thus making it difficult to place on your Glog. You could use the screen recording software I reviewed in a previous post, but with everything else new we’re attempting, it just seems like too much for us right now. However, I thought Voki was worth mentioning, as it too can be used as an assessment tool and is just plain cool. If you’ve heard of other free online talking avatar creators, I’d love to know about them. Most of the ones I found were loaded with inappropriate avatar body and clothing options, or else inappropriate ads.


At any rate, we’ve been having a lot of fun with this assignment. My next mission is to find online video editing programs that my students can use with the movies they’re filming for their Glogs. I have found that one of my cameras only records in .mov format, and Windows MovieMaker does not recognize the file. Rather than using a video converter, I think it would be fun to try to find a free online movie editing program that has different features from MovieMaker.

Hmmmm, I think I found a topic for next week's blog! ;)

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 14, 2010 at 10:55 AM

    Hello Anna,
    Love your post, sounds like a great project. I thought I should let you know that Glogster has both a social networking site for teens, which you link to, and an education site edu.glogster.com. Also, on that site are instructions for embedding Vokis - "Adding Extra Features to Glogster EDU".

    Good luck with your project!!!
    Jim Dachos
    Glogster Education Manager

    ReplyDelete
  2. Vishal SinghDecember 19, 2014 at 1:08 AM

    Glogster sound like a fun project. I think i ghould do a review about it on my education blog http://exampariksha.com will post back here about the feedback.
    Best regards

    ReplyDelete

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