Glogging,+not+Blogging

// **Glogging, Not Blogging: A Favorite Teaching Resource** // **(Kiley Kapuscinski)**

Located at www.glogster.com, Glogster is an online resource enabling individuals to create graphic blogs (“glogs”) to express and explore a variety of ideas, opinions, and emotions. Targeting English-speaking adolescents, Glogster’s online multimedia posters can be customized by inserting backgrounds (“walls”), graphics, sounds, text, videos, and links (each of these items are available in a wide variety of templates, or can be personalized by user uploads). Registration on this site is free and easy (minimal personal information is required), and completed glogs are saved online on the Glogster site (where they are assigned a URL, and can be accessed by any viewer if the “public” setting is enabled). While the construction of personalized glogs is the main feature of this site, Glogster also enables users to engage in social networking by offering shortcuts to, and messaging tools between, “friends” on glogster, and by tallying the number of “views” and “fans” one’s glog has generated. I have created a sample glog at: []. Given that glogs are a visual and auditory expression of the individual’s creativity and imagination, the potential uses of glogs in educational contexts are limitless. However, one course for which they are particularly well suited is Grade 10 Academic English (ENG2D). Specifically, Glogster would enrich the Reading and Literature Studies strand of this course by providing a fun and dynamic medium through which students can meet the overall expectation of “demonstrat[ing] an understanding of a variety of literary, informational, and graphic texts” (Ministry 73). While most students are excited to share their opinions about their reading after it is completed, the traditional format of read-the-book-and-write-an-essay does not (unsurprisingly) appeal to all, or even most, students. Philip Graham suggests that adolescents are particularly sensitive to “empower[ment] or disempower[ment]” in various social contexts (including school), and that “disempowerment in different structures or circumstances leads to distress or depression” (78); providing students with a choice about the medium of their response not only provides them with a sense of agency, but also ensures that students are motivated and empowered to complete their response to the best of their individual ability. Moreover, the Media Studies strand in this course requires students to create “meaning through the combination of several media “languages”—images, sounds, and graphics” (Ministry 18). Providing ENG2D students with access to Glogster recognizes that such non-print languages and disparate text forms are increasingly dominating our cultural surroundings, and that students will be advantaged in their future endeavors by developing their media literacy. In addition to meeting the curricular demands of ENG2D, glogs meet the psycho-social needs of students at the grade-10 level. To the extent that most students at the grade-10 level are largely defined by their peer relations and their need to express their individuality, glogs are an ideal medium for creatively responding to literary texts and engaging in peer evaluations. For example, the capacity of the Glogster site to create networks of “friends”, and the site’s option of sending messages between friends (using the “message me” function) allows students to rate, comment on, and be inspired by, the glogs created by their classmates. In addition, the site facilitates the student’s creative expression of the self in its offering a text box on the site homepage (bearing the catchy title of “My Dashboard”) for adolescents to record their answer to the posted question “How do I feel right now?” and to create and post their own sound recordings and videos using the “Webcam Grab” function. [1] Similar to the unique perspectives elicited by each student in her/his reading of a literary text, no two glogs will ever be alike. While the advantages of the Glogster site are clearly many, one should avoid being blindly romanced by new technological tools, and should be cautious of the potential limitations posed. Most glaringly, the open-access format and social networking aspects of Glogster suggest that non-student visitors can (and likely will) be visiting, and potentially commenting on, students’ work. While Glogster attempts to warn off adult visitors by including adolescent icons (ie. for female users, teddy bears, bubble lettering and hearts), this iconography also has the potential to attract dangerous viewers. Alternately, some students may engage in the online bullying of their peers by writing disparaging remarks about their glog. Responding to these challenges, educators should implement a safety policy for student use of Glogster, whereby students register using a fictional screen name (shared only with the teacher and class), respond only to messages submitted from classmates or known friends, and contact the teacher immediately if one receives suspicious/hurtful messages from a stranger or another student. An additional limitation of the site lies in its use of side-bar advertising (while orientating myself with Glogster, I noticed ads for laptop computers, fast food and sunglasses) that may distract students from the primary task of creating a glog. However, this limitation might alternately be regarded as an educative opportunity to teach students about how learning to read media necessarily involves learning to read advertisements as such, and to be discriminating consumers. Finally, teachers using Glogster should anticipate some students’ limited access to the internet and, therefore, might provide computer lab time to complete glog assignments. Ultimately, however, the advantages of Glogster by far outweigh the disadvantages, and the creation of graphic blogs has the potential to enrich the education of adolescent students in a variety of disciplines. **Notes**

[1] The Webcam Grab function allows the glog instructional strategy to include differentiated instruction to the extent that gifted students can create their own theme songs, documentary videos, music videos etc. **Works Cited** //Glogster-Poster Yourself.// 2010. 10 January 2011 . Graham, Philip. “More Cheerful Than Moody.” //The End of Adolescence//. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 69-89. Ministry of Education. //The Ontario Curriculum Grades 9 and 10 English//. Revised. 10 January 2011 . Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. “Adolescence and the Aims of Hated.” //The Anatomy of Prejudices.// Harvard: Harvard UP, 1998. 299-323.