I recently signed up for a couple 2013 evo (Electronic Village Online) sessions. I signed up for two at this time last year and, I have to admit, that I didn't see either of them through to the end! My interest waned, work got in the way, etc., etc.. This year, however, I've chosen subjects (mentoring and podcasting) which I'm really keen to learn about and I'm determined to make the time to complete the courses, despite the fact that my Mum will be arriving from the UK any day now and will be with me for a month!!
So, the sessions started on Monday 14th and I decided to get ahead with the podcasting activities first. Most of these were quite straightforward as I was already familiar with the platforms and tools being used - Yahoo Groups, Google Maps, Voxopop, etc. Activity number two, however, required me to use a 2.0 web tool which was new to me - Glogster. I had heard about it before and considered using it with my classes, but had never quite got around to it. This, then, was my opportunity and I was excited by it!
The first thing I did was go to teachertrainingvideos.com from the wonderful Russell Stannard and watch his series of videos on Glogster. He extolled the virtues of this amazing 2.0 web tool and confirmed my idea that it would make a great addition to my bank of teaching tools. Armed with this information and with Russell's clear instructions ringing in my ears, I felt confident that I could complete the task in hand.
A few days on, I can report that I have (reasonably) successfully completed the activity I had to do - to produce a Glog introducing myself as a person and as a teacher. I was to include images, text, video, graphics and links, but no audio at this stage as we are to go back and add it later in the course. This is what I produced:
So, the sessions started on Monday 14th and I decided to get ahead with the podcasting activities first. Most of these were quite straightforward as I was already familiar with the platforms and tools being used - Yahoo Groups, Google Maps, Voxopop, etc. Activity number two, however, required me to use a 2.0 web tool which was new to me - Glogster. I had heard about it before and considered using it with my classes, but had never quite got around to it. This, then, was my opportunity and I was excited by it!
The first thing I did was go to teachertrainingvideos.com from the wonderful Russell Stannard and watch his series of videos on Glogster. He extolled the virtues of this amazing 2.0 web tool and confirmed my idea that it would make a great addition to my bank of teaching tools. Armed with this information and with Russell's clear instructions ringing in my ears, I felt confident that I could complete the task in hand.
A few days on, I can report that I have (reasonably) successfully completed the activity I had to do - to produce a Glog introducing myself as a person and as a teacher. I was to include images, text, video, graphics and links, but no audio at this stage as we are to go back and add it later in the course. This is what I produced:
Not a bad first effort, but am I happy with it? No, I'm not!! I found the creation of my Glog to be a laborious and frustrating process. It took me far more hours than I could justify spending on it. I found the toolbar incredibly difficult to use. Uploading images and videos wasn't easy. I took advice from fellow participants on my EVO course and changed my browser, but I still had problems. It was very difficult to edit items within the Glog and I never did manage to put in links to external websites. In the end, I gave up and published what you see just to get the assignment finished.
So, my questions. Is it just me? What am I doing wrong? How do you insert links into a Glog??? I still see the potential of the tool and know that my students would love it........ if it was easy to use. And that's the problem! If my students had half the problems I did, it would be frustrating for them and the whole exercise would lose its effectiveness as a language learning tool. So, I'm asking for advice. Has anyone used Glogster in their classes? What has worked/not worked? Any comments would be gratefully received!!
Hi Andrea
ReplyDeleteYou produced such a gorgeous glog, it certainly looks like you spent hours on it! But I agree that Glogster is a little frustrating to use. I didn't have too much trouble uploading images once I worked out how to do it, but it took ages to load each image even though I thought they were quite small. My frustrations were more to do with Glogster wanting to put fancy frames around everything and getting the text size just right.
To add hyperlinks, you just click on your image, then you should see a link button on the left ( the second one under the 'Image' button). You can also select any text you've added and create a hyperlink there - in the text edit window, you'll see "Hyperlink to selection" just above where you choose text colour.
I can't see me using Glogster again myself anytime soon, and don't think I'd use this with my ESL learners. I'd prefer something that is simpler to use and has more focus on language, spoken or written. But, still keen to see how we go on to use it in the EVO Podcasting course.
Cheers,
Lesley
Thanks for the comments, Lesley. I saw where you were supposed to be able to add hyperlinks, but I couldn't get anything to stay in the box - either by copy/pasting or by typing directly. I know it should work because you obviously had great success with it!
DeleteAt the moment, I agree with you & won't be using it with my students, but I'm still open to be persuaded otherwise - especially because my students particularly like creating posters and love project work! Perhaps I could use it with higher-level classes and get them to come up with a tutorial in simple English to teach lower-level groups how to use it!?
Maybe you need to try a different browser. I was using Safari on my (new) Mac and it was all okay, but I had problems with Voxopop on Safari so had to switch to Firefox. I was just listening to Miguel on the live session recording saying that we may need to try as many as 3 different browsers to get all tools to work.
DeleteI love your idea of getting higher level learners to create a tutorial for lower level learners!
Great to see Sara here and in the podcasting course too!
Lesley
Hi Andrea,
ReplyDeleteI am also participating in the course and found Glogster difficult to use - In fact, I put the sign "work in progress" on my Glog because I wanted to submit "something"......If we have trouble using it, then our students definitely will have a difficult time.
In the meantime let's see how the course progresses....At least we both know what Glogster is!
Regards,
Sara
Thanks, Sara - I'm glad I'm not the only one!!
DeleteAs you say, let's see what unfolds - I'm enjoying the course overall and hope to learn about 'easy-to-use' tools to create my own podcasts.
All the best,
Andrea
Andrea, I share your pain!
ReplyDeleteI love the *idea* of Glogster; that you can incorporate a variety of different media, rearrange them on the page to suit the story you want to tell and enjoy those extra dimensions that traditional narrative forms don't offer ... but boy, you're so right in that it's a far from rewarding experience.
The woes I enjoyed were within a school context with a group of students, but the nature of their frustrations arose from the speed (or lack of it!) at which everything happened - ages to log in, ages for screen refresh, ages to add new elements, crashing mid workflow. It could be argued some of that might have been due to school Internet bandwidth problems, web filtering or aggressive antivirus checking, but the truth is we don't experience any of those problems when working in other Web 2.0 tools.
No, I'm afraid Glogster has dropped off my list of recommended applications.
Thanks for reading, Ian, and for taking the time to comment. It appears that our experiences would suggest that Glogster just isn't worth the effort needed to use it with students!
DeleteThat's been my experience as well, it seemed to make very basic functions difficult and not appear as I want. I've never inflicted that upon my students (although I did once suggest using it for a homework, one student attempted it and disliked me for it)
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, Chris. I feel better knowing that it's not just me!
DeleteWow! these are wonderful tips. Thanks for sharing them with us.
ReplyDeleteVietnam Tour Packages, www.toursvietnam.com.au