My students may not necessarily have any experience in the world
of Graphic arts when they enroll into the GDA program. They may have seen a
cool CG movie or they may be into comic books and come in thinking they are
already a designer. They fail to realize the steps one must take to be a
successful designer and don’t understand the concept of one must crawl, walk
and then run in order to achieve a learned behavior.
In the 1st course of the program, Basic Design,
students receive a brief lesson on the history of graphic design. They receive
an assignment where they have to write a paper on a specific era within the
timeline and as you can imagine they are not so excited about that.
So in my journey of looking for web 2.0 tools to add to my
digital palette I came across Glogster.com, which will allow me to bring
excitement to this history lesson and give the students the opportunity to collaborate and work
together.
What is Glogster? Wikipedia defines Glogster as a “social network that allows users to create free interactive posters,
or glogs. It
looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content.” You may be asking yourself, what is a glog, I know I did.
- Glog, short for graphical
blog, is an interactive multimedia image.
What does Glogster do? Glogster provides an environment to design interactive posters. A
student has the capability to insert text, images, photos, sound, videos,
special effects and other elements into their glogs to create a multimedia
online creation.
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| Dashboard Window |
Getting Started. Setting up an FREE account was fairly simple. You have the option to sign in
with your Facebook account or create a new account, if preferred. I used my
Facebook account; this option will be best for my students being that my
students are constantly forgetting their username and passwords. If we can
limit the creation of usernames and passwords than it will make our lives less
frustrating. After
creating my account, I entered my dashboard, which is where my profile, 'glogs'
library, and interaction with others are located.
The Creation. This is where you are able to begin to create your Glog
(the interactive poster). To
create a new Glog, I had to choose the orientation of the layout. You only have
2 options, portrait or landscape. In your edit
screen, you click on the “ADD CONTENT” button. When you click it, you open the
menu bar, which displays specific design elements to start with the
building of your interactive poster.
TEXT: Adding type to your
Glog is simple. You click on “Use It” in the Text Window and your text pops up on
your poster. You can control the size, font, color and alignment to your
liking. The font option is limited but for beginner students, like the students
in DD150, is sufficient.
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| Inserting Images |
GRAPHICS:
This section introduces the clip art gallery that Glogster offers. This
allows the students to have some fun with image and layout. You can resize,
rotate, and duplicate images. The option I like the most in this section is
that you add hyperlinks to the clipart.
IMAGE:
The most important aspect to your interactive poster is your images. In
this section you can upload
images to your layout. You can search or retrieve for images from your
Facebook, Flickr, and Picassa accounts. It will ask you to sign into
your account if you are to choose from those specific accounts. The best part
of this section is a Google search built in for images so students do not have
to leave the site to search for images.
WALL:
In this section you
can modify the background of your Glog. You have the option of choosing solid
colors for your background or from the gallery.
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| Poster in preview mode |
AUDIO:
In this section you can upload sound into your Glog. You have the option
to record yourself or upload audio.
VIDEO:
You can add movies into your Glog as well. You have the option to either
add movie files from your computer, YouTube, or Vimeo account. You can also
customize the video player to coordinate with the style of your design.
Building
a Community. Once your design is finished, it can be saved and
shared for the world to see. It can be shared through a link or directly to social
networks such as Facebook & Twitter. Glogs
can also be exported and saved to computer-compatible formats.
You
can also share Glogster through the community section where you can add friends
and comment on each others work. This feature is great because students can
look at each others work and learn how to give and handle constructive
feedback early in the program. In addition to sharing with the world, the interactive
poster can be edited with a group of individuals. This is a great tool to have students work collectively on 1 themed projects.
Cost/Efficiency. The
best thing about this tool is that it’s FREE. They offer an educational
version, Glogster EDU. It is described as a collaborative online learning
platform for teachers and students to express their creativity, knowledge,
ideas and skills in the classroom. Besides creating interactive posters, it
also features collaborative class projects, teacher management, and private
student environments. The educational version is not free. You must purchase a
license, which includes different packages.
Outcome. Creating
a lesson plan to teach history is always a challenge because the snooze button
comes to mind. With Glogster I can take the presentation to the next level.
This tool would work for my beginner students in introducing the history aspect
of the graphic design field.
I
tested the product by designing a poster to embrace the era of the 1980’s. I
researched images from their textbook, which I was able to search from the Google
search option. I
included a movie that I found in YouTube that details the history of graphic
design.
I believe this will chance the face of the
timeline paper assignment. My students will have fun learning the history of
Graphic Design with Glogster.
Here is link to the the Time Line of the 1980's era poster I created with Glogster.com
The Google+ page worked
very well in the class. Both my first and second course students have become
part of this community of designers that I am building in and outside of the
classroom. It felt good when I read their positive posts pertaining to their experience
in the classroom and how they look forward for the next day. My students
continue to comment and post inspirational links for each other. I even get a
post of when they are running late, which I think is adorable. It’s exciting to see how much they have
embraced the Google+ page. 
