Most days, the conversation after school goes something like this: "Hi boys, how was your day?" I ask. "Fine," mumble my children as they proceed to hit and kick each other in the back of the van while I pull away from school. One day this week, however, my third grader was actually excited about something and wanted to tell me all about it. He had to write a book report but the report was on the internet and he was creating his own web page...or blog...or poster...or something. OK, so he was still mumbling.
He kept saying "glogster" but it came out all gargled and I couldn't understand him. I had blog on my brain as I was thinking about what to write for this fourth blog post. I asked him to repeat what he was saying. "Did you say blogster?" I asked.
"NO Mom, Glogster," my son replied. He was trying to be nice, but he was annoyed already.
"You're writing a blog in school? Me, too! I'll show you my blog when we get home!" I eagerly told him, thinking we might bond over blogs.
He just rolled his eyes at me. "Glogster, Mom" he repeated, his voice getting a little more sassy.
"Oh I'm sorry, honey," I said, "I misunderstood - you said, glogger?" Now I started thinking about gløgg - the Danish spiced wine that I sometimes drink during Christmas. But, back to my son - really, I was trying to understand him.
"MOM! It's GLOGSTER!" he was shouting at this point.
"OK, GLOCKSTER!" I said in my own sassy tone of voice. I thought he was going to jump out of the van if I didn't come to my senses pretty soon.
He gave up. "I'll just show you when we get home." Poor kid, he was deflated.
Once we were home, he marched me to the computer and pulled up www.edu.glogster.com. He forgot our annoying conversation and became excited again as he pointed out the poster he had worked so hard on. It was pretty cool, I admit, even though I was still expecting to see a blog. You can create your own poster by adding images, graphics, video, text and more. I watched him add more content to his poster - it's an easy to use drag and drop interface. He had some cool graphics, a lightning bolt or two and lots of text bubbles where he wrote the main ideas of the book he was reporting on. Because I'm a safety nut, I made sure the entire world couldn't see what my son was posting. (Or "postering"...) Sure enough, it's private - his teacher had created a password and the students logged in under her account.
I know I mentioned this a few times already, but my son was very excited about this poster project. And let me assure you, he does not get very excited about school. Halfway through this blog post, I decided to create my own poster so you could see what I'm talking about. It was fun and easy to create. You could use it for any subject, not just book reports. We've been learning about how to engage students in this Ed Tech class. I think this is an awesome way to engage students in what they're learning. They can show what they know in a fun and creative way while practicing their technology skills. Check it out for yourself at edu.glogster.com. Not blogster or glogger or glockster...it's glogster. Go ahead and poster yourself!
Image created by me, used with permission from edu.glogster.com
