Monday, 14 November 2011

Nightmare on Glog Street

This was my first disappointing week of inquiry; until now, I’ve played with four other Web 2.0 tools and have found a practical and exciting use for each of them in my professional (and often personal) life. Glogster, however, has not met that aspiration but rather has disappointed me because I had very high hopes for it.

When I first tried Glogster, at the encouragement of a teacher-friend, I thought it would be the ideal tool to create exciting and interactive reader’s advisory tools. In fact, I spent a bit of time this summer creating and having my staff created a few of them in order to post them to our library’s website. As sometimes occurs, however, time ran short and I actually changed jobs and wasn’t able to put the created Glogs into operation before I left the old job.
I initially chose Glogster to create my “Autobiography of a Tech User” early in this semester only to discover I couldn’t link to pdf’s. I was excited to try Glogster again and looked forward to this week’s inquiry to afford me that opportunity. I sat down, created what I thought was a pretty snazzy little Glog as a reader’s advisory for Young Adult Dystopia novels. It took hours to complete the process: deciding on the titles, finding images, saving them to a folder on my computer, cropping them to an appropriate size, saving them to a file on Glogster then finally uploading them to the actual Glog page. Links to book trailers had a similar procedure: find them, save the link to a folder, then link them to the text on the Glog. There just seemed to be a bunch of extraneous steps slowing the process. Considering this tool is supposed to be education-friendly, which I read as “child-friendly”, I don’t really understand why there are so many steps. The easiest and most logical step of all was linking the book images to their catalogue record, a web address that did not require being saved to a folder before being linked. Why couldn’t the videos be linked that same way?
I did have a moment of celebration when I was successful in embedding the Glog into the library’s website; a process that is simply and clearly explained on Glogster. As an extra step, I added a link in case it wasn’t apparent that one could click on the Glog itself to see it full size (there is a little drop down menu that shows up right on the embedded Glog that should enable one to do that). I embedded, I tested, it all worked, I celebrated. Sadly, I celebrated too soon. When I went to show a co-worker my ingenious creation, the embedded Glog didn’t link to a full-sized version of itself, but to the Glogster website where one could create a Glog. That certainly wasn’t my intention of working on it and embedding it in my library’s website. I thought perhaps it was a little glitch and had my co-worker try the link only to have the same results: instead of linking to the full-sized version of the Glog, it linked to the site where one would create a Glog.
Sporting rose-coloured glasses, I assumed again that it was simply a glitch, a one-time, freak-of-computer-gremlins, so while talking to a teen who was in fact signing out a dystopian novel, I showed her. Of course I was horrified when once again it linked to the Glogster main website rather than to my own Glog. Truly, the sole purpose I could think of to use Glogster in a library application wasn’t working.
Finally, when I started trying to write this blog post, Glogster just gave up the ghost for me. I tried logging in, only to be told Glogster was too busy to log in. Then when I finally did log in, I got a message that "something really bad had happened" and the Glogster dashboard showed that I had two Glogs, but it wouldn't let me access either one. Honestly, if I'm going to use something for work, I need it to be a lot more dependable than it has been this past week.
So what is Glogster used for? As with Prezi, Glogster is not mentioned in the library literature and I was left with searching education databases for my answers.  Three Heavyweights explains that Glogster is “a mashup of graphical blog” (2011, p. 10) and when used in a school setting, allows students to create interactive posters. According to Berger and Trexler, “Glogster is a free poster creation tool that contains text, images, videos, links, and audio” (2010, p. 143).  They mention creativity as a drawing point for use and I will admit that it does appeal to my creative side.  They even go on to suggest a library use: as a link to a school library account, a place to share teacher and student resources, book reviews and author promotion, so I don’t think it was such a stretch for me to assume I could use it for a library application. In fact, It’s My School Library suggests using Glogster to record wish lists for future reading (2010, p. 17) reinforcing that it was not irrational for me to assume that Glogster could have library applications. Even Vandenbroek suggests that teacher-librarians use Glogster as a means of reaching struggling students in association with their teacher’s plan to assist struggling students (2010, p. 48).
Berger and Trexler also tell us that Glogs can easily be shared: Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other Web 2.0 options are described as being ways of easily sharing Glogs (p. 145). However, my experience has told me that although they can be shared easily, they cannot be easily read or used if the option to see them in full-size only works part of the time.
I received an email a couple of weeks ago saying that Glogster was undergoing some upgrades and that I would find new and exciting tools when I next used it. True enough: I found new wallpapers and icons, but I still struggled with locating what I was looking for. Icons, wallpaper, fonts and the like are all broken down into “themes” such as “romantic” or “Christmas” but they are not broken down into things I would find useable: colours or types of icons. It took me 52 pages of icons before I found one that contained an arrow. It seems to me that logically others, too, would look for icons of a similar function: arrows, happy faces, hearts and what have you. Without a search option, in my opinion, Glogster hasn’t upgraded sufficiently. Until I can simply search for or easily locate something in pages upon pages of options, Glogster is not an efficient enough tool for me to pursue professionally. And I’ll be honest: I can’t ever imagine using Glogster for my own personal use.
Ultimately, Glogster receives a low score for library use from me. Perhaps this is one of those tools that should remain in the realm of education and not venture beyond it.

I've delayed posting due to all the issues I've had. At the time of posting this, I'm still having difficulty accessing Glogster. I will work on it and post images as soon as it allows.
Read What I Read:

Berger, P. & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited.
Going Beyond Loch Ness Monster. (2010). School Library Monthly, 26(8), 6 – 8.

It’s My School Library. (2010). School Librarian’s Workshop, 31(1), 17.
Three Heavyweights (2011). Internet@Schools, 18(1), 10.

Vandenbroek, A. (2010). RtI: The Librarian’s Fairy Tale? Library Media Connection, 29(2), 48 – 50.

1 comment:

  1. I feel your pain! Glogster was challenging for me as well!! :oP Check out my Glogster post.

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