Glogster is one of the most popular social networks used for educational purposes by many foreign students and teachers.
What is new and interesting in this social network?
Glogster allows users to create free interactive posters, banners. Such posters are called glogs or graphic blogs. Glogs are look like multimedia posters or pictures on the wall in the social networks. However, the reader can “interact” with dynamic content. Means for creating glogs are much more advanced than the built-in editors of walls in facebook, for example.
In glogs you can put your pictures and photos in different points of the page, select the size of the images, their relative orientation, download music and video, turn on multimedia with buttons of various players, embed links to other resources, etc. In other words, everything that is possible on the blogs – but based on visual rather than textual form of information presentation.
It should be noted a very important point. Part of the social network is Educational Glogster (Glogster EDU). This part is specially made so that the teacher has the right to start a band, class, register and invite children. Training and project work are private, but the possibility of publishing the final work is defined by the teacher’s decision. The importance of visual information in the training is undeniable, so presentations, blogs, dynamic and interactive web technology is gradually opening up new opportunities and prospects for children creativity under the guidance of teachers in primary and secondary schools.
Such educational hierarchy of users, coming directly from the creators of the service, gives teachers in the Educational Glogster much more weight than in other social networks. At least nominally, but the teacher is selected. But the pleasure is paid. For teacher it is $99 (EDU Teacher Premium), or $29 (EDU Teacher Light) per year.
More than 600,000 teachers and students are currently registered in the Glogster EDU around the world. The main mission of this site is to educate young students and prepare them for taking advantage of the Internet and multimedia applications. According to the English-language Wikipedia, Educational Glogster is used by more than 150,000 teachers from different countries, leading two million students.
Thus, American teachers are raving about the Glogster service, which develops skills in writing and speaking, encourages thinking, and specially designed version for education allows the teacher / librarian to work with the whole class.
