One of the most difficult things my new yearbook students learn each year is how to use InDesign. The very basic concepts (one pica spacing between elements, dominant photos, caption formatting, etc) get lost in trying to learn the program. This year, I decided to try something different.
Edu.glogster.com was unblocked late last spring in my district (I don't know if that was intentional or by accident, but I'm not complaining). I decided to give it a try with the yearbookies. They designed a spread about themselves and their interests. The instructions were pretty simple, but they needed to include correct spacing between elements, a headline and subhead, correct captions for photos, a dominant photo and a brief profile. The products were pretty good. The students enjoyed working with Glogster and the frustration level with the program was very low. I'm not showing samples here because most of them included their last names in their profiles (since that is our standard for profiles in the yearbook).
Last Friday we shared the products and students were easily able to pick out what was working and what wasn't. This coming week, we will be transferring that information into a template in InDesign. It will be interested to see how quickly students will adapt their skill set.
Thank you for the information about EduGlogster. Although I was aware of Glogster, I have not spent much time trying to use it. However, I was not aware that there was an educational arm of Glogster. I will be working with a sixth grade teacher this year who is interested in incorporating more technology into her classroom. Since she has several wonderful social studies units that culminate with a poster project, I had thought that making a multi-media "poster" would be a good starting point for her. I am encouraged to hear that your students were able to work with EduGlogster with minimal frustration. Would you say that the site is user friendly for the teacher as well? My colleague is enthusiastic, but has limited schema to draw from for this. Thanks for your help!
ReplyDelete