LAST week I attended a number of workshops at the University of the Free State. In the past whenever I attended one of these workshops there would always be someone promoting blogging in education. This time I was surprised that blogging was not presented as a great tool, but rather glogging. Yes it is not a typing error, I did say glogging.
If you like scrapbooking you will love Glogster (www.glogster.com). The website can be used for you to create your own online “scrapbook”. You can add all your photos, videos, memories, even sounds of your life to the page and easily arrange and manipulate it to form a beautiful collage. You can arrange and resize images, videos and even rotate and stack images on top of each other. You only realise how much you are able to do with it after you have viewed a few of the demo pages that are available on Glogster.
I think this is probably one of the greatest tools for educators who want their students to create a themed website by researching a topic. Glogster knows this and there is even an educational category on the website.
I must tell you that for individual users the creation of a page is still free but there are options with more features etc. that you will need to pay for.
You will, however, be able to create great things with the free version.
If you are a teacher, you should really use it for your next assignment. Your students will love you for it! But as I said, if you love to scrapbook or express yourself creatively and even if you just feel arty, then this is a great tool to explore.
Nico Baird is a new media expert and can be contacted at nico@clicksa.co.za or visit www.nicobaird.com.