Managing eLearning Blog

Glogs

While constructing my wiki (you can view my wiki at http://managingelearn.wikispaces.com/) I discovered another online tool that would be brilliant for use in an educational context. Its a glog. A glog is kinda like a blog but its more of a poster type thing.

You can register to make a glog at

http://edu.glogster.com/

Its free and a great way for students to express ideas in a creative way.

Here's a glog that I quickly put together:

http://s0170003.edu.glogster.com/krystals-elearn-glog/.

It's also at the bottom of this post.

You can edit your glog, create as many as you like and then send them to people. Basically its just an online poster board. You can also comment on another person's glog so this would be great for teachers to add comments to student work.

SWOT of a Glog

Strengths:

- fun and engaging

- free to make

- have the opportunity to add images, sound, text, links, upload files etc

- can be made collaboratively

- fast and no mess (previous ways of poster making could be disastrously messy - think glitter and paint)

- the ability to comment

Weaknesses:

- I haven't yet figured out how to save a glog to desktop and upload it elsewhere. (If anyone else finds this is possible let me know.)

- Just a space - without direction this could just be placing items on a page

Threats:

- Not well known yet, a find out how to use it yourself

- Hard to find (I stumbled onto the site accidently)

Opportunities:

- Collaborative learning

- Teachers can see what students are thinking

- great possibilities of activities this could be used for.

Links to Theory:

If constructed well a glog could promote constructivist learning approaches as well as collaborative learning. The reason that I believe that it is good for constructivism is that the teacher has the power to write a comment and then the learner can go back and improve on their original work. It also helps aide cognitivivism because the learner is using their own mental processes to decide how to put the work together. In elearning, cognitive thinking involves using thought processes to construct ideas (K Lein, n.d).

Links to Frameworks:

This tool could be used using Bloom's Taxonomy (Teachnology, n.d). It could be used to promote higher order thinking. This tool could be part of the create process if constructed properly. When using this tool, learners are creating a poster that displays their thinking processes.

References:

Lein, K. (n.d.). Elearning pedagogy. Retrieved from http://elearningpedagogy.com/index.html

Teachnology. (n.d). Bloom's taxonomy verbs. Retrieved from: http://www.teach-nology.com/worksheets/time_savers/bloom/