I was excited when I heard that Glogster had an education edition. I immediately signed up my class. When Glogster sent the passwords, which were a series of letters and numbers, I knew these needed to be changed. My initial thought was I’ll teach the kids. They can do it! With enough time and some small group work it could have been done, however we did not have that much time (and I was excited to get the kids going) so I changed the passwords myself. I will teach them that lesson another day.
Before we entered the lab for the children’s first time on Glogster, I showed it to them in the classroom on the big screen. I have a class of 2/3 boys who are very chatty, wiggly and easily distracted (as all 2nd graders are.) The lesson was during the last hour of the day, not usually a time that they are most attentive. I realized as I was demonstrating Glogster, they were SILENT! How many times are your students SILENT when you are explaining or demonstrating a new concept? I am usually interrupted a few times, and need to give at least a couple “looks.” But not this time. Their eyes were glued to the screen and they were taking it all in. Wow!

In the Lab everyone got right to work and loved playing with Glogster. They had an assignment to complete. Each child had written a short poem about Spring. These were edited and ready for the kids to turn into a Glogster page. I made it a rule that as these were spring poems, I did not want any of the skulls or crawling cockroaches on their glog. This was a personal preference, but I also know my boys, and if one can do it, the rest will do it and I just didn’t want to go there. They created some wonderful glogs. I also showed them how to add sound. Using our beautiful new Macs with the integrated Webcam and microphone, the children were able to do it all themselves sitting at their computer. We have filmed children reading in the room and they knew what to do when they hear “Quiet on the Set!” They were very cooperative! I was amazed at how quickly the children figured it out, and they were great at helping their neighbors. This meant I did not hear my name called as many times as usual and that everyone was able to use our lab time productively. We had a second lab session that week, and many of the children finished the spring glog, so I showed them how to embed it on a new wiki page. Again they picked it up quickly! You can see the finished glogs on the Spring Glogs page of our wiki.