I decided to create one to see how easy it was and it was! I did learn a few lessons along the way:
1. Type all of your content before you start. I was typing on the fly and uploaded a picture. The web page seemed to freeze while uploading so I hit refresh. Big Mistake! Everything I had typed was erased!
2. Be succinct! You have a variety of text boxes to choose from, all of different sizes. I chose a tag style and didn't have much room to type information. When typing you get a scroll bar, but it doesn't remain after you are done editing the text box.
***Correction: After looking at some student examples I found that you do get a scroll bar, but it doesn't show until you move your mouse over the text box.
3. Don't Refresh! As mentioned above, you lose all your work. Your images, audio and video that has been uploaded stay in their respective sections, but your text disappears along with all the elements you added to the page. I noticed that when uploading items, the page didn't refresh to show that the item was uploaded. To get around this I had to switch tabs. For example, when I uploaded an image, I had to switch to the Frames tab, then back to the Images tab to see if my image uploaded.
Lessons learned, I was glad to finish my glog and publish it. I was concerned about having to stop in the middle, but when I registered for an account to save my glog, I saw that you can go back and edit them later.
Accounts. Yep, everyone needs to have an account. But, they have an educational section where teachers get master accounts and can register their students. You can register up to 200 students and none of them need an email. Best of all, if the teacher sets up a virtual classroom students can only see the glogs by other members of their group and can only communicate with group members. There are additional features that will be added as part of the EDU 2.0 in the near future.
Here's my glog about the Apollo 11 mission.
Alright, you can embed these glogs into pretty much anything, but in the case of my blog post, it doesn't fit. It is embedded as a full size glog and is way to wide for the post area. So, I've just added a link or you can click the image. Enjoy!
This is definitely something to have students use instead of the old poster board or report and simpler than creating a digital story or multimedia project with Scratch or Flash. This is quick, easy and customizable and will engage your students!
