What is Glogster?

Glogster is a powerful tool where students can create multi-media digital information to share with their learning community and the world. The Glogster is now Ipad and I phone compatibles this year with an App. The paid version allows you to manage projects and classes and assess the products.

Usually used for content classes it can be used as an integrated skills approach to ESL to practice writing , reading listening and speaking. Students can research a topic using authentic listening and reading text , take notes and then construct their own text and embed both written and spoken language plus images and video. The Glogster creates a link that can be shared in any LMS such as Edmodo or Blackboard and also automatically generates a QR Code for scanning by phone.

How can Glogster Assist with Improving Language Proficiency?

Designing a Glogster allows students to create a form of an infographic, which facilities their digital literacy skills for comprehending visual information by constructing an infographic. This is an important skill for Task 1 in IELTS which requires the processing of visual information and writing a description of a visual such as a pie, bar or line graph; map; or pie chart.

Glogster personalizes learning as it allows students to explore creative expression. A formerly dull writing task can come alive in Glogster.

If you are following a topic based syllabus in ESL students can use Glogster to practice the target language in context.  If students are all given sub-topics they can work collaboratively and build their knowledge by embedding their Glogs in a Master Blog on that topic. 

How to Make a Glogster 

Watch the training video one of my my students and I created:

http://youtu.be/urHwndesy0c

Using Glogster to Build Knowledge and Practice IELTS Test Skills

This semester we used Glogster to integrate vocabulary and structure in the form of a lexico-grammatical approach. Students used read to write and ;listen to write strategies to build their knowledge to answer IELTS questions and this knowledge was jigsawed and shared as students acted as experts teaching each other using listening and speaking skills and gaining confidence giving presentations to the class face to face using their Glogsters.

1.       Test Practice Skills : Reading, Speaking Part 2 and 3 and Writing Task 2

People is a common theme in ESL and in the IELTS exam. This project based task focused on questions about people from past papers. Students then chose a famous person alive or from the past and examined their biography. They explored descriptive questions which required a descriptive genre and also a past narrative in many cases for their past life. It included a focus on sequencing and the organization and sequencing of information over time. Students used a variety of resources to take notes on a time line graphic organizer.  They also looked at what their achievements were and why they were famous. Accordingly students read and wrote using a range of present simple and past simple verb phrases and chose their topics and added questions.