The power of MOOC

I have recently found myself in a MOOC. A #diffimooc to be specific. For those not in the know about this, a MOOC is a massive open online course.  It's a way for a university to offer a course, incorporate many useful and relevant communication and collaboration tools, and promote the idea of openness and sharing of information and ideas - the essential heart of web 2.0.

Instead of a blog, have your students try a Glog!

How many times have any of us assigned one of our favorite alternatives to papers? The one that will allow students to be creative, yet show us their learning - the poster. I know the poster has been a staple of my final project arsenal for years.

Well, I recently found a new FREE application that allows my students to create a poster on steriods - Glogster. Glogster is an online application in which you can make a Glog - which is the web equivalent of a poster. But it's different than a poster because you can add your own pictures or pictures from the web, movie clips, mp3 files like podcasts or music - anything! You (or your students) have instant access to all of the very best multimedia tools you could want to express an idea or opinion for display.

Glogster has a lot of benefits - students can always look at their Glogs on the site any time - and so can others - anyone with a Glogster account actually! Glogster is also a social platform. Kids can "friend" others on Glogster through interest in each other's Glogs. Although a Glog is just one poster, it can convey a powerful message. Many Glogsters begin to develop quite a reputation for a certain style of Glogs! You can also embed your Glogs in a wiki, blog, Facebook, MySpace - anything!

If you don't want to turn your students loose in the wide wild world of Glogster, there is an EDU version in which you can sign up for a teacher account and a set number of student accounts. You can sign up for accounts for just one class, all your classes, or even your whole school (up to 200 student accounts per teacher). This is a little extra work for teacher in that you have to enter your student names in each of the accounts you create. But Glogster sends you the passwords and verifications for each of the new accounts - you can simply give these to your students and keep the email. That way when a student forgets their password you have it. Another control factor of the EDU version of Glogster is that your students can't share and collaborate with the wide wild world - only the other students you sign up. Depending on your comfort level with this, the EDU version may be the one you want.

Either way, whether you go with the EDU version or have your students sign up for their own accounts, sign up is quick and easy, and you can begin building a Glog right away. Uploading images, video, and sound couldn't be easier, and Glogster offers an amazing pallet of backgrounds, frames and effects to choose from so that each Glog is as unique as possible.

I have had my French students making Glogs recently in which they are incorporating podcasts of French language conversations, music, and images. They are embedding these on our French class wiki. The kids are having a lot of fun with them, and several have mentioned that they would like to use Glogster in one or two of their other classes.

Below I've embedded 2 examples of Glogs from the main site (not my students' - theirs aren't done yet). The first is a fun weekly fact glog that allows the student who created it to make friends and interact in a fun creative way with people anywhere. I'm guessing this Glog will also provide her with lots of new food for thought! The second Glog is a tribute to a popular book and movie, "Twilight". This is a well put together fan tribute - a student who has lovingly and carefully compiled their favorite images and songs from the movie to convey their personal feelings about the story. Both of these Glogs are good examples of how Glogs can be interactive, creative, and show the voice of the student creating them.

To students, they are like the very best of MySpace and blogs combined! For teachers - they are a new and creative way to have our students get more engaged with what they are learning in class and personalize it.





Perusing the Glogster site you will see a lot of humor, a lot of silliness, some disturbing Glogs, and a healthy dose of teen angst. But what strikes you most is the amount of work, thought and creativity that has gone into most of these - the self expression is evident - and the possibilities are endless!

Our Students' Online Reality

A series of videos was published by PBS's Frontline earlier this year, beginning in January. The series was titled "Growing Up Online". The seven part series explores how the modern internet has transformed the experience of childhood.

The topics covered in this series include how much of a teen's life is lived online - and how much of that life is known to, or hidden from their parents. The second part of the series explores how school systems are trying to understand and relate to students who live lives outside of school that are often alien to their teachers. Several of the programs touch on some of the positives of this new online generation - one being the opportunity for creativity - often a kiss of death for a shy student in school - to thrive and prosper in an online environment. Also explored is the fear and myths about online predators, as well as a guide for parents trying to understand and cope with this new world their children are growing up in.

The Growing Up Online series is 7 parts long - with each segment being around seven to nine minutes long, so it is easy to view it in short segments. Although your home connection may struggle with this a little, you should have no problem viewing the segments at school.

For ANY teacher - Growing Up Online is a must see. This series offers a sometimes anxious, but often hopeful look at how our students are exploring and innovating within this new frontier.

A cautionary tale for your students about their social networks...

This is a post copied from Seth Godin's Blog. Seth Godin is a sort of internet and marketing guru and author of several books, including the recent bestseller, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (it applies to lots more than business and I highly recommend it).

We know that many of our students have social network spaces on services like MySpace and FaceBook. Many of us don't know enough about how these social sites work, but it seems as though we should be giving our students some guidance regarding their use.

This recent blog post from Seth Godin is an excellent starting point for discussion with your students. It is a story that illustrates so many points about social networking perfectly. There is nothing wrong with social networking - but kids need to be aware just how "out there" their information really is. There are a lot of positives to be gained from social networking, but like anything else, kids need to use it responsibly.

Do your students a favor - share this story with them:

Personal branding in the age of Google

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person's name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, "binge drinking."

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, "I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I'm annoyed by it. I'll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings."

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don't have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you're on Candid Camera, because you are.