Solar Energy Glog

Glogster is an online tool for making digital posters, but allows for so much more than just pictures and text.  A glogster poster (known as a glog) can also contain music, videos, graphics, drawings, data and links to online sites.  The greatest educational value is found in the Glogster EDU or Glogster EDU Premium plans, in which the teacher can create personal accounts for the students, check on progress and control security settings (Glogster EDU, 2013).

As part of the year 8 science plan produced by QSA (2012, p. 1), “…students investigate how energy is generated and transformed in order to meet society’s energy requirements while taking into account sustainability and ethical considerations. They research sustainable and renewable energy technologies.”  One of the ways to meet these requirements would be to assign the students the task of researching a couple of sustainable and renewable energy technologies and presenting the information for each in a glog.  Their learning would be scaffolded by a series of questions that need to be addressed in the glog.  These questions would include:

• How does the technology transform the sustainable and renewable energy into a source that can be used by society?
• What are the advantages of the technology?
• What are the disadvantages of the technology?

This task would be done instead of the teacher presenting a series of lectures on the different technologies.  The teacher would be able to gauge what the students are learning through the glogs being produced.  At the top of this blog posting is an example of such a glog that could be produced to fulfil this task.

A PMI analysis of using a glog is outlined below:

Plus

•  Don’t need to purchase and transport materials to make the poster
• Can put on more things than just writing and pictures, e.g. can use video, music, create online links to other sites or create your own and upload to Glogster
• Can be worked on wherever there is a computer with internet access
• Allows the teacher to monitor progress and provide feedback
• Teacher is able to create a private, virtual classroom by generating an account for each student
• Glogs are able to be printed or embedded on other sites, such as websites, wikis or blogs
• Allows students to express their individual creativity
• Very easy to edit and change the glog once it has been started
• Is a simple technology which “builds towards the use of other tools (e.g. podcasts, video, wikis, blogs, photo editing)” (Going beyond loch ness monster, 2010, p. 7)

Minus

• Can’t include a large amount of text
• Isn’t a platform for collating and storing information
• No collaborating options

Implications

• The online nature of the project means there is no possibility of the students leaving poster items behind and so not being able to work on the project.  Everything needed is located on the glogster website.
• It is difficult to include a large amount of text, and therefore, is not appropriate for assessment tasks that require a large amount of information.
• All student research and reflection needs to be completed before work is started on the glog.  It is a medium for presenting what the students have learned about the topic (Going beyond loch ness monster, 2010, p.8).
• Even though Glogster doesn’t possess any collaborating options it would be possible to a single student account to a group of students, giving all the group individuals access to the one glog.  However, the students would either have to take turns working on the glog or be around the one computer working as a group.  There would also be no traceable record of the contribution made by each student.
• Since students’ glogs are private, the teacher can control who sees the glog through the online site it will be posted to.  For example, access to student glogs could be restricted to parents and students by embedding them on a password protected website.

 References

Glogster EDU. (2013).  What is Glogster EDU? Retrieved from http://edu.glogster.com/what-is-glogster-edu/#benefeatids

Going beyond loch ness monster. (2010). School Library Monthly, 26(8), 6-8. Retrieved from http://www.schoollibrarymonthly.com

Queensland Studies Authority (QSA). (2012). Year 8 plan – Australian Curriculum: Science. Retrieved from www.qsa.qld.edu.au